Re: xdm, X, fvwm2 : newbie questions
On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, Gabor Kontur wrote:
> What i simply did was copy the file /etc/init.d/xdm.dpkg-dist to
> /etc/init.d/xdm.
> Is that all there is to it ? Is this script complete as it is now?
Lets hope so. You can have a look at the script's contents and if inside
it looks like a real script, just trust that it is ok.
You also have to have a line "start-xdm" in /etc/X11/config and in
/etc/X11/xdm/Xservers a line ":0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X" for xdm to work.
Last but not least, the xserver must actually work; if startx doesn't
work, you're in for trouble. First get "startx" to work reliably, then see
if you can get "/etc/init.d/xdm start" (as root) working and only then
edit /etc/X11/config.
> Is there a way to influence the typematic delay of the keyboard? Characters
> start to duplicate themselves when i keep a key pressed longer than about
> one fifth of a second.
kooij@pc47:/home/kooij> $ apropos typematic
typematic: nothing appropriate.
kooij@pc47:/home/kooij> $ apropos keyboard
dumpkeys (1) - dump keyboard translation tables
getch (3ncurses) - get (or push back) characters fromcurses terminal
keyboard
getstr (3ncurses) - accept character strings fromcurses terminal
keyboard
kbd_mode (1) - report or set the keyboard mode
kbdrate (8) - reset the keyboard repeat rate and delay time
keytables (5) - keyboard table descriptions for loadkeys and
dumpkeys
loadkeys (1) - load keyboard translation tables
setleds (1) - set the keyboard leds
setmetamode (1) - define the keyboard meta key handling
showkey (1) - examine the scan codes and keycodes sent by the
keyboard
setxkbmap (1x) - set the keyboard using the X Keyboard Extension
xkbcomp (1x) - compile XKB keyboard description
xkbprint (1x) - print an XKB keyboard description
kooij@pc47:/home/kooij> $ dpkg -S kbdrate
util-linux: /sbin/kbdrate
util-linux: /usr/man/man8/kbdrate.8.gz
So, util-linux has a tool kbdrate, I've never used it myself though.
Also, in X11 "xset" lets you control a lot of things like the keyboard,
mouse and monitor properties. With the "-r" option you can apparently set
some keyboard options. Better read the manpages yourself.
> I did a silly thing, which is "cat /proc/kcore"
> ( but then they say you have to try everything once in life ).
> After a while all the characters on that tty became gibberish and i found
> no way of fixing the problem but i am sure the solution is simple even
> though unknown to me. (rebooting solved it but there must be a nicer way
> of doing it)
This happens because there are 8-bit characters in /proc/kcore. The
terminal driver interprets those as commands and it can get confused. Use
reset to clean up the terminal's state. You can read about this in the
"tset" manpage (reset is a sort of alias for tset.)
> When i start ae in an xterm window i cannot use the arrow keys to scroll.
> They work fine with other programs though.
Hmm, ae, yes.. well, ae seems not to work very well in xterm. If you want
an easy editor, try joe. Or learn vi. You're advised to learn ed and ex
too if you want to be a vi power-user.
> Does cdwrite or a similar program support drives with an ATAPI interface ?
I believe the latest and greatest versions of either cdwrite or cdrecord
(probably the latter) do this. Another option is to let the kernel (also a
very recent version - probably even recent 2.1.x) do scsi emulation for
ide devices.
> Mouse support
> The file /etc/gpm.conf has the following entries:
> device=help
> responsiveness=help
> type=ps2
> append=""
>
> the script /etc/init.d/gpm produced the following message at startup:
> gpm -m help -t ps2 -r help/usr/sbin/gpm: help: No such file or directory
> My mouse is indeed PS2 and at startup i get this message as well:
> PS/2 auxiliary pointing device detected. driver installed
> The mouse works fine with X so i simply scratched the useless call to
> /etc/init.d/gpm.
> The question is: how do i adjust the responsiveness of the mouse which is
> rather slow at the moment ( meaning that the distances the mouse travels on
> my mouse pad are too large).
This looks like an incomplete setup.
Mine (a ps2 mouse) has:
device=/dev/psaux
responsiveness=
type=ps2
append="-l \"a-zA-Z0-9_.:~/\300-\326\330-\366\370-\377\""
(I admit not to know what the append string is all about.)
Try running gpmconfig as root. It is a nice script (you can read in
/usr/sbin/gpmconfig what it does) that takes you by the hand when setting
up gpm. If you still have a hard time, spell out the gpm and gpm.conf
manpages and try again.
Never just delete scripts from /etc/init.d . That is a senseless thing to
do, because it isn't necessary at all. All that is needed is to delete the
link to /etc/init.d/gpm in /etc/rc*:
kooij@pc47:/home/kooij> $ find /etc/rc* -type l -name "*gpm*"
/etc/rc0.d/K20gpm
/etc/rc1.d/K20gpm
/etc/rc2.d/S20gpm
/etc/rc3.d/S20gpm
/etc/rc4.d/S20gpm
/etc/rc5.d/S20gpm
/etc/rc6.d/K20gpm
> Window Managers
> First i tried kde but it proved unreliable so i had it removed with
> dselect.
> That process left me without a Xsession file so i renamed
> /etc/X11/Xsession.tmp to Xsession.
> (While kde was installed, /etc/X11/Xsession was a symlink to
> /etc/X11/Xsession.kde)
> I certainly hope this is the only messup the kde (de)installation scripts
> caused.
>
> So i reverted to using twm for a while but now i use fvwm2.
> With that i have one major problem: At the initial login (as root) it does
> not execute the profile scripts as for a login shell but rather another
> script (probably the one that ends with a rc).
In my (vanilla) /etc/X11/Xsession there is a line:
startup=$HOME/.xsession
and another one:
if [ -x $startup ] && grep -q ^allow-user-xsession /etc/X11/config
then
exec $startup
else
# what it does if $HOME/.xsession doesn't exist or isn't executable or
# /etc/X11/config states that executing it is against policy
fi
So your solution is to create a sensible $HOME/.xsession (and don't
forget to "chmod +x" it.) In the file you can do something like:
if [ -f $HOME/.bash_profile ]
then
. $HOME/.bash_profile
fi
# some other clients to spawn, like xterms, xclocks &c.
xterm &
xclock &
xload &
# nice, but it might suddenly be gone, so only start if it exists
if [ -x /usr/bin/X11/floatbg ]
then
floatbg &
fi
# finally start a window-manager. don't forget to exec it, because if
# this script ends, the Xsession ends and you can login to xdm again.
if [ -x /usr/bin/X11/fvwm2 ]
then
exec fvwm2
else
exec twm # trusty twm is always present (knock, knock)
fi
> When i start xterm (which is not started automatically) i can login just
> fine as another user but not as root. It says "incorrect login" or
> something to that effect.
> What might be the cause of this problem ?
That I cannot determine from the symptoms as you tell. It might just be
that you're using the wrong password for root? Who knows, it's a little
hard to tell from your description.
> That´s it. No more questions!
Phew! ;-)
> I thought i´d mention though that i had a crash. Now if this was windows
> 95, i´d say that´s absolutely normal, but this really worries me. It
> started with one of my terminals freezing up ( it was displaying a manual
> page). So i decided to shut down quickly but i wasn´t quick enough because
> the terminal i ran shutdown from froze up during shutdown .
> Trying to run shutdown from another terminal didn´t work: it realized that
> it was running already.
> So i tried shutdown -c 0 but that process froze as well. I had a look at
> those shutdown processes with ps and their status was D.
> Finally i had to press the reset button.
> I wasn´t really doing anything unusual, except maybe restarting xdm many
> times over (to figure out how it works) (with twm) .
Again I don't really understand what is happening. A status "D" means that
a process is waiting for I/O to happen. That usually makes a process
pretty unresponsive to signals (what shutdown uses to tear down all
running processes - read "man kill" and "man signal".)
Stuff really locking up is never a good sign. There is a fat chance that
it is indeed related to X11 processes gone astray. Remember that the
xserver runs with root privileges and directly interfaces with the
hardware. If things go wrong there, then the problem is a little harder
than the average process gone zombie.
Cheers,
Joost
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