Re: fixing slink boot-floppies for sparc
[recipient list trimmed]
On Mon, 5 Apr 1999, Joshua Uziel wrote:
> What happens with xdm? Does it run the X server as root and
> keep it that way? Or is it restarted when the user logs in?
> (I haven't used xdm in like 3 years.)
Well, in all cases, the wrapper which invokes the X server is setuid root.
It oughtn't matter what the group/other permissions are, as long as
/dev/fb* are owned by root. Then again, I haven't done any experimentation
in this respect - I didn't actually have to change the permissions.
> > The /dev/mouse link has to be created: "ln -sf sunmouse /dev/mouse"
> >
> > I think everyone agrees with this. The issue is where should be fix
> > it. Should we just hack the boot-floppies to do this? Is this a
> > base-files bug? A xserver-sun bug? (I don't think the latter)
>
> Does anything other than X use /dev/mouse? How about gpm? I'd
> say if X is the only thin to use /dev/mouse then it's the latter
> else the former.
Nothing actually explicitly refers to /dev/mouse unless you tell it to, I
think, although I believe many things default to it.
The reason (as I understand it) is that on Intel boxes there are a whole
pile of different mouse devices - various kinds of bus mouse plus serial
mice - so /dev/mouse evolved as a convenience. Most useful when the
installer asks you "What kind of mouse do you have?" and automagically
configures the link for you.
On Suns, though, there is only one kind (I think - maybe the PCI keyboard/
mouse stuff does things differently?), which is /dev/sunmouse. If that's
the only mouse device, then perhaps the base ought to contain the
/dev/mouse -> /dev/sunmouse symlink.
--Jeff
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