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- Installation Details for XFree86[tm] 4.1.0
-
- The XFree86 Project, Inc
-
- 1 June 2001
-
- Abstract
-
- How to install XFree86.
-
- 1. Introduction
-
- This document contains information about installing the XFree86 binaries as
- provided by The XFree86 Project.
-
- The XFree86 binaries that we provide for UNIX-like OS's (Linux, the BSDs,
- Solaris, etc) are packaged in a platform-independent gzipped tar format (aka
- "tarballs" identified by the .tgz suffix). Along with the binaries we pro-
- vide a customized version of the GNU tar utility called "extract" and an
- installation script. We recommend that these be used to install the bina-
- ries.
-
- 2. Downloading the XFree86 4.1.0 binaries
-
- We provide XFree86 4.1.0 binaries for a range of operating systems at our ftp
- site <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.1.0/binaries/>. Often during
- releases our ftp site is heavily loaded. Instead of downloading directly
- from us we recommend that instead you use one of our mirror sites. Another
- advantage of using our mirror sites is that some of them support http access
- (ours does not).
-
- Our binaries are organized by sub-directories which correspond to each of the
- OS/platforms for which we provide binaries. First go to the sub-directory
- that represents your OS platform. In some cases (e.g., Linux) there may be a
- number of choices depending on the architecture or libc version your platform
- uses. In all case we recommend that you first download the Xinstall.sh
- script, and run it as in the following example to find out which binary dis-
- tribution you should download.
-
- sh Xinstall.sh -check
-
- The output of this utility tells you which is the correct set of binaries for
- you to download. If you are careful with this step you will save yourself a
- lot time and trouble from NOT downloading an incompatible distribution.
-
- NOTES:
-
- o The Xinstall.sh script must be downloaded in binary mode, otherwise it
- won't run correctly. If you get lots of "command not found" messages
- when you try to run it, then it is most likely because the script wasn't
- downloaded in binary mode. Some web browsers won't do this for files of
- that name, so we also have a copy of it called "Xinstall.bin", and most
- browsers should download that correctly. When downloading it under this
- name, select "save as" on your browser, and save the file under the name
- "Xinstall.sh".
-
- o The Xinstall.sh script requires some system commands and utilities to
- function correctly. While most systems will have these, some Linux
- installations may not. If you find that the script is failing because
- of some missing system command, you will need to install it before you
- can continue. If you don't know how to do this, then we recommend that
- you obtain this version of XFree86 from your Operating System distribu-
- tor.
-
- o Always use the version of the Xinstall.sh script that's provided with
- the release you're installing. Older versions of the script may not
- install newer releases correctly.
-
- Once you're run the Xinstall.sh script and found which binary distribution is
- suitable for your system, download the necessary files. The twelve (12)
- mandatory files for all installations are listed below. If you have not
- downloaded all of the files, the installer script will complain.
-
- 1. Xinstall.sh The installer script
- 2. extract The utility for extracting tarballs
- 3. Xbin.tgz X clients/utilities and run-time libraries
- 4. Xlib.tgz Some data files required at run-time
- 5. Xman.tgz Manual pages
- 6. Xdoc.tgz XFree86 documentation
- 7. Xfnts.tgz Base set of fonts
- 8. Xfenc.tgz Base set of font encoding data
- 9. Xetc.tgz Run-time configuration files
- 10. Xvar.tgz Run-time data
- 11. Xxserv.tgz XFree86 X server
- 12. Xmod.tgz XFree86 X server modules
-
- NOTES:
-
- o Some web browsers have a problem downloading the extract utility cor-
- rectly. If you encounter this problem, download the version called
- extract.exe instead. This should fix the problem. (This is not a
- DOS/Windows executable.)
-
- o A few distributions don't have or require the Xvar.tgz tarball. If it
- is present in the binaries sub-directory for your platform, then it is
- required.
-
- o The Darwin/Mac OS X distribution doesn't have or require the Xmod.tgz
- tarball.
-
- o Some distributions may have additional mandatory tarballs. While rare,
- the installer script will tell you if any are missing.
-
- The following eleven (11) tarballs are optional. You should download the
- ones you want to install.
-
- 1. Xfsrv.tgz Font server
- 2. Xnest.tgz Nested X server
- 3. Xprog.tgz X header files, config files and compile-time libs
- 4. Xprt.tgz X Print server
- 5. Xvfb.tgz Virtual framebuffer X server
- 6. Xf100.tgz 100dpi fonts
- 7. Xfcyr.tgz Cyrillic fonts
- 8. Xfscl.tgz Scalable fonts (Speedo and Type1)
- 9. Xhtml.tgz HTML version of the documentation
- 10. Xps.tgz PostScript version of the documentation
- 11. Xjdoc.tgz Documentation in Japanese
-
- NOTES:
-
- o Some distributions may have some additional optional tarballs.
-
- If you miss some and want to install them later, go to the Manual Installa-
- tion (section 4., page 1) section.
-
- 3. Installing XFree86 4.1.0 using the Xinstall.sh script
-
- We strongly recommend that our XFree86 4.1.0 binaries be installed using the
- Xinstall.sh script that we provide. There are a lot of steps in the manual
- installation process, and those steps can vary according to the platform and
- hardware setup. There is a description of the manual installation process
- for the most common cases below (section 4., page 1).
-
- You must login as the super user (root) to run the installer script. Place
- all of the downloaded files into a single directory (choose a temporary loca-
- tion with enough space). Use the cd command to change to that directory and
- then run the installer script as follows:
-
- sh Xinstall.sh
-
- Answer the prompts as they come up. If you are missing something that is
- required, the installer may tell you to install it before trying again. If
- the problem is that you did not download all of mandatory files aforemen-
- tioned, then the installer will tell you which ones are missing and ask you
- to download them before proceeding.
-
- 3.1 Questions the installer may ask
-
- The installer asks some questions that may not have obvious answers. The
- information here should help you answer them. In most cases, apart from the
- first question, the default answers should be OK.
-
- If you run the installer from within an X session (the installer checks if
- $DISPLAY is set), you will be warned that doing so is not a good idea.
- Unless you have a good reason for knowing that this won't be a problem, you
- should exit your X session, including stopping xdm or equivalent if it is
- running, before continuing. If you ignore this warning and run into prob-
- lems, well, you were warned!
-
- If you have an existing X installation, you will be warned that proceeding
- with this installation will overwrite it. Only those things that are part of
- our standard distribution will be overwritten. Other X applications that you
- may have installed will not be removed. Some configuration files may be
- overwritten though, but the installer should prompt you before doing so. As
- the opening greeting says, it is strongly recommended that you backup any
- existing installation before proceeding. If you want your old applications
- to still be there after you've installed, don't do the "backup" by simply
- renaming your old /usr/X11R6 directory. It is better to make a copy of it,
- and then install over the top of the original one. If you run into problems
- and want to revert to the old installation, you can then delete the overwrit-
- ten one and copy the saved version back.
-
- During the first part of the installation over an existing version, the
- script may remove some old files or directories that would get in the way of
- the new installation. It will list which files/directories have been
- removed. If none are listed, then none were removed.
-
- The next step when installing over an existing version is to check for exist-
- ing configuration files. As of XFree86 version 3.9.18, the run-time configu-
- ration files are installed by default under /etc/X11 instead of under
- /usr/X11R6/lib/X11. The installer will move the existing ones for you and
- create the necessary symbolic links. If you don't want to have these config-
- uration files under /etc/X11, then you should answer "no" when asked about
- it. Answering "no" here also means that the new configuration files will be
- installed in the old /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 location.
-
- Note: for the rare systems that don't have symbolic links, this question will
- not be asked. The default answer is "yes" because that is best for most sit-
- uations. It is our new default. It makes it easier to share the /usr/X11R6
- directory between multiple hosts, and allows it to be mounted read-only. If
- you don't need these features, then you can safely answer "no" if you don't
- want them moved.
-
- When installing over an existing version, you will be prompted before each
- set of configuration files is installed. If you haven't made any Customisa-
- tions to your existing configuration files, then you can safely answer "yes"
- for each of these. If you have made customisations, you can try answering
- "no". If you run into problems later, you may need to manually merge your
- customisations into the the new version of the configuration files. The con-
- figuration files can all be found in the Xetc.tgz tarball. See the section
- below (section 4., page 1) about manual installation for information about
- extracting them separately.
-
- After the configuration files have been dealt with, the other mandatory com-
- ponents of the binary distribution will be installed. This should proceed
- without any user intervention.
-
- If you downloaded any of the optional components, the installer will ask you
- about each one before it is installed. The default answer is "yes". If
- there are any that you've since decided that you don't want to install,
- answer "no" when prompted.
-
- After that is done, the main part of the installation is complete. The next
- steps are to tidy up some aspects of the installation. The first of these is
- to run "ldconfig" on systems that require it, so that the newly installed
- shared libraries are accessible. Then the fonts.dir files in some directo-
- ries are updated so that the fonts can be accessed correctly. Next, the
- installer checks to see if your system has a termcap file or terminfo files.
- If it finds the former, it tells you how you may update the entries in that
- file. If it finds the latter, it asks you if you want it to update them for
- you.
-
- You may be asked if you want to create links for the GL libraries and header
- files. The OpenGL standard on some platforms (Linux in particular) says that
- these should be installed in the standard system locations (/usr/lib and
- /usr/include), so the installer offers to create the appropriate links. If
- you're running Linux, you should probably answer yes. For other platforms it
- is your choice. If you already have another version of libGL in /usr/lib,
- answering "yes" will remove it and replace it with a link to the version we
- supply. The installer will show you a listing of any existing versions
- before asking if they should be replaced.
-
- Finally, the installer asks you if you want a link created for the rstart
- utility. On most modern systems the link isn't essential, so the default
- answer is "no". Answer "yes" if you know that you need it. If you find
- later that you need it, you can create it easily by running:
-
- rm -f /usr/bin/rstartd
- ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/rstartd /usr/bin/rstartd
-
- 3.2 After the installation is complete
-
- The next step is to configure the X server. That is covered in detail in an
- as-yet unwritten document :-(. In the meantime, there are three ways to cre-
- ate a basic X server configuration file for XFree86 4.1.0. One is to run the
- xf86config utility. Another is to run the xf86cfg utility. The third option
- is to use the new -configure X server option:
-
- XFree86 -configure
-
- Note that if you are running Darwin/Mac OS X, there is no step 3 :-). You
- should skip this step, as configuration is not required or possible. The X
- server configuration file is not used on Darwin/Mac OS X.
-
- The X server config file (XF86Config) format has changed compared to 3.3.x.
- Also, its default location is now /etc/X11. Finally, there is now only one X
- server for driving video hardware, and it is called "XFree86". Once you're
- satisfied with the operation of the new X server, you can safely remove the
- old XF86_* and/or XF98_* X server binaries from /usr/X11R6/bin.
-
- After the X server configuration is done, it may be advisable to reboot,
- especially if you run xdm (or equivalent) or the font server (xfs).
-
- 4. Installing XFree86 4.1.0 manually
-
- This section describes how to manually install the XFree86 4.1.0 binary dis-
- tributions. You should only use this method if you know what you're doing.
- The information here covers some common cases, but not every possible case.
-
- Put all of the downloaded files into a single directory (choose some tempo-
- rary location with enough space). Become the super user (root). All of the
- following commands should be run as root, and they should be run from the
- directory that has all of the downloaded files. The "extract" utility should
- be used to unpack the tarballs. This is a customised version of GNU tar that
- has the gzip code built-in, and which has a different usage when run under
- the name "extract". One important thing that extract does that most versions
- of tar do not do by default is that it unlinks existing files before writing
- new ones. This is important when installing over an existing version of X.
- If you choose to use some other utility to extract the tarballs, you're on
- your own.
-
- 4.1 A new installation
-
- The simplest case is when there is no existing X installation. The installa-
- tion procedure for this case is as follows:
-
- chmod +x extract
- mkdir /usr/X11R6
- mkdir /etc/X11
- ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 X[a-df-uw-z]*.tgz
- ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 Xvfb.tgz # If you are installing Xvfb
- ./extract -C /etc/X11 Xetc.tgz
- ./extract -C /var Xvar.tgz
- ln -s /etc/X11/app-defaults /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/fs /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/lbxproxy /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/proxymngr /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/rstart /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/twm /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/xdm /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/xinit /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/xsm /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/xserver /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- chmod ug-w /usr/X11R6/lib # Make sure the permissions are OK
- /sbin/ldconfig /usr/X11R6/lib # For Linux
- /sbin/ldconfig -m /usr/X11R6/lib # For FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
- /usr/X11R6/bin/mkfontdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
-
- 4.2 Installing over an old installation
-
- If you have an existing installation of X, you should make a backup copy of
- it before installing the new version over the top of it.
-
- Before doing anything else, make sure the extract command is executable, and
- also link it to the name "gnu-tar" so that it can be used as a regular tar
- command:
-
- chmod +x extract
- rm -f gnu-tar
- ln extract gnu-tar
-
- The first part of the procedure is to move the old run-time config files from
- /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 to /etc/X11. Create /etc/X11 if it doesn't already exist.
- For each of the following sub-directories (app-defaults, fs, lbxproxy, prox-
- ymngr, rstart, twm, xdm, xinit, xsm, xserver) that you want to move, check
- that there is a sub-directory of this name in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11. Create a
- sub-directory of the same name under /etc/X11, then copy the files over by
- running:
-
- ./gnu-tar -C /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/subdir -c -f - . | \
- ./gnu-tar -C /etc/X11/subdir -v -x -p -U -f -
-
- For each subdirectory that is moved, remove the one under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- and create a symbolic link to the new location:
-
- rm -fr /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/subdir
- ln -s /etc/X11/subdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
-
- For those subdirectories that didn't already exist under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11,
- create one under /etc/X11 and create the symbolic link to it:
-
- mkdir /etc/X11/subdir
- ln -s /etc/X11/subdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
-
- Once that is done, extract the config files from the Xetc.tgz tarball into a
- temporary directory:
-
- mkdir tmpdir
- ./extract -C tmpdir Xetc.tgz
-
- and then copy each sub-directory over to the installed location:
-
- ./gnu-tar -C tmpdir/subdir -c -f - . | \
- ./gnu-tar -C /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/subdir -v -x -p -U -f -
-
- If you have customised any config files in your old installation, you may
- want to omit those sub-directories, or copy selected files over by hand.
-
- Once that's done, the main part of the installation can be done:
-
- ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 `pwd`/X[a-df-uw-z]*.tgz
- ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 Xvfb.tgz # If you are installing Xvfb
- ./extract -C /var Xvar.tgz
- chmod ug-w /usr/X11R6/lib # Make sure the permissions are OK
- /sbin/ldconfig /usr/X11R6/lib # For Linux
- /sbin/ldconfig -m /usr/X11R6/lib # For FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
- /usr/X11R6/bin/mkfontdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
-
- Generated from XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Install.sgml,v 1.11.2.2 2001/06/01 18:09:48 dawes Exp $
-
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