There are two packages in BLFS that implement the X Window System: Xorg and XFree86. These packages are quite similar. In fact the base system of Xorg is XFree86-RC2. The primary difference as of this writing is the license provisions of the packages. For someone building a package for their own use, these issues are not significant. Most large commercial distributions have decided to use the Xorg package, but several still use XFree86. A second reason for the forking of X packages is the stated goals of the developers. Some developers were unhappy with the administration and progress of XFree86. Xorg's future plans include significant improvements to the internals of the system and more frequent releases. XFree86 continues to be a solid, conservitive application with excellent driver support. Both Xorg and XFree86 can be installed in the same way, but this section will provide a slightly different and more current variation for installation. Xorg is a freely redistributable open-source implementation of the X Window System. This application provides a client/server interface between display hardware (the mouse, keyboard, and video displays) and the desktop environment while also providing both the windowing infrastructure and a standardized application interface (API). Download (HTTP): Download (FTP): Download size: &xorg-size; Estimated Disk space required: &xorg-buildsize; Estimated build time: &xorg-time; , , and . There are several files that need to be fetched from the download location: X11R6.7.0-src1.tar.gz X11R6.7.0-src2.tar.gz X11R6.7.0-src3.tar.gz X11R6.7.0-src4.tar.gz X11R6.7.0-src5.tar.gz X11R6.7.0-src6.tar.gz X11R6.7.0-src7.tar.gz The first package contains the Xorg libraries and support programs, the second contains standard X programs, the third contains the X server, the fourth and fifth are fonts, the sixth is normal documentation, and the seventh is hardcopy documentation. To check your downloads for integrity, download the md5sums file. Then: md5sum -c md5sums All seven packages should give an OK status. If you have an Intel P6 (Pentium Pro, Pentium II and later) it is recommended that you compile MTRR (Memory Type Range Registers) support into the kernel. The kernel can map Cyrix and AMD CPUs to the MTRR interface so selecting this option is useful for those processors also. This option is found in the "Processor type and features" menu. It can increase performance of image write operations 2.5 times or more on PCI or AGP video cards. In the "Character Devices" section, enable AGP Support and select the chipset support on your motherboard. If you do not know the chipset, you may select all the chip types at the expense of extra kernel size. You can usually determine your motherboard's chipset by doing: cat /proc/pci In the "Character Devices" section, disable Direct Rendering Manager unless you have a Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) supported video card. A complete list of DRI supported video cards can be found at in the Status section. Currently, supported cards include those from 3dfx (Voodoo, Banshee), 3Dlabs, ATI (Rage Pro, Rage 128, Radeon 7X00, Radeon 2), Intel (i810, i815), and Matrox (G200, G400, G450). If you do enable DRI here, make sure you select the video card(s) you want to support as a module. Additionally NVidia provides their own closed source binary drivers, which do not make use of DRI. If you intend to use these drivers, do not enable DRI. If you made any changes to the kernel configuration, recompile the kernel. Copy the arch/i386/boot/bzImage and System.map from the kernel build directory to /boot. Edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and add the new kernel to the boot menu. (If you use lilo, edit /etc/lilo.conf and run lilo.) If you build Xorg in a chroot environment, make sure the kernel version of the base system and the target system are the same. This is especially important if you enabled DRI support as a module as instructed above. When building Xorg you should create a shadow directory of symbolic links for the compiled code. To do that, we first make the lndir. Starting from the xc directory: pushd config/util && make -f Makefile.ini lndir && cp lndir /usr/bin/ && popd Now create the shadow tree: mkdir ../xcbuild && cd ../xcbuild && lndir ../xc The next step is to create the config/cf/host.def file. The documentation for Xorg indicates that the application will build without a host.def file, but the included libraries for fontconfig and freetype2 do not build properly on a base LFS system so we must specify that we have those and some other libraries too. config/cf/host.def is a C file, not a shell script. Be sure to make sure the comments delimited by /* ... */ are balanced when modifying the file. cat > config/cf/host.def << "EOF" /* Begin Xorg host.def file */ /* System Related Information. If you read and configure only one * section then it should be this one. The Intel architecture defaults are * set for a i686 and higher. Axp is for the Alpha architecture and Ppc is * for the Power PC. AMD64 is for the Opteron processor. Note that there have * been reports that the Ppc optimization line causes segmentation faults during * build. If that happens, try building without the DefaultGcc2PpcOpt line. ***********/ /* #define DefaultGcc2i386Opt -O2 -fno-strength-reduce -fno-strict-aliasing -march=i686 */ /* #define DefaultGccAMD64Opt -O2 -fno-strength-reduce -fno-strict-aliasing */ /* #define DefaultGcc2AxpOpt -O2 -mcpu=ev6 */ /* #define DefaultGcc2PpcOpt -O2 -mcpu=750 */ #define HasFreetype2 YES #define HasFontconfig YES #define HasExpat YES #define HasLibpng YES #define HasZlib YES /* * Which drivers to build. When building a static server, each of these * will be included in it. When building the loadable server each of these * modules will be built. * #define XF86CardDrivers mga glint nv tga s3virge sis rendition \ neomagic i740 tdfx savage \ cirrus vmware tseng trident chips apm \ GlideDriver fbdev i128 \ ati AgpGartDrivers DevelDrivers ark cyrix \ siliconmotion \ vesa vga XF86OSCardDrivers XF86ExtraCardDrivers */ /* * Select the XInput devices you want by uncommenting this. * #define XInputDrivers mouse keyboard acecad calcomp citron \ digitaledge dmc dynapro elographics \ microtouch mutouch penmount spaceorb summa \ wacom void magictouch aiptek */ /* Most installs will only need this */ #define XInputDrivers mouse keyboard /* End Xorg host.def file */ EOF There are several other options that you may want to consider. A well documented example file is config/cf/xorgsite.cf. Install Xorg by running the following commands: ( make World 2>&1 | tee xorg-compile.log && exit $PIPESTATUS ) && make install && make install.man && ln -sf ../X11R6/bin /usr/bin/X11 && ln -sf ../X11R6/lib/X11 /usr/lib/X11 && ln -sf ../X11R6/include/X11 /usr/include/X11 If you have one of the supported DRI cards and have enabled DRI kernel modules as explained above, you now need to update the kernel modules to ensure they are compatible with the current version of Xorg. To do this, perform the following: cd programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/os-support/linux/drm/kernel && make CC=/opt/gcc-2.95.3/bin/gcc -f Makefile.linux && mkdir -p /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/char/drm/ && cp gamma.o radeon.o sis.o r128.o i810.o i830.o mga.o tdfx.o \ /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/char/drm/ && depmod -a If you recompile or upgrade your kernel, you will need to re-copy the appropriate driver module(s) to the kernel module library and rerun the depmod -a command. If you created AGP support as a module when compiling the kernel, you may have to add a line to /etc/modules.conf to ensure the agpgart module is loaded. For instance, the AGP version of the Radeon video card will use the radeon.o driver. It will need to have the line below radeon agpgart in /etc/modules.conf to enable DRI support. ( make World 2>&1 | tee xorg-compile.log && exit $PIPESTATUS ): This command runs multiple makefiles to completely rebuild the system. 2>&1 redirects error messages to the same location as normal output. The tee command allows viewing of the output while logging the results to a file. The parentheses around the command run the entire comand in a subshell and finally the exit $PIPESTATUS ensures the result of the make is returned as the result and not the result of the tee command. When rebuilding Xorg, a separate command that may be used if only minor changes are made to the sources is make Everything. This does not automatically remove generated files and only rebuilds those files or programs that are out of date. ln -sf ../X11R6/bin /usr/bin/X11 ln -sf ../X11R6/lib/X11 /usr/lib/X11 ln -sf ../X11R6/include/X11 /usr/include/X11 These commands are present to enable other (broken) packages to build against Xorg. We do this even though the i Filesystem Hierarchy Standard says: "In general, software must not be installed or managed via the above symbolic links. They are intended for utilization by users only." make CC=/opt/gcc-2.95.3/bin/gcc -f Makefile.linux: This builds the Xorg compatible kernel modules using the same compiler used to compile the kernel. cp gamma.o radeon.o sis.o r128.o i810.o i830.o mga.o tdfx.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/char/drm/: Put the kernel module(s) where the kernel can find them. You only need to copy the driver you need to support your video card. depmod -a: Update the modules.dep file for module management. Edit /etc/ld.so.conf and add /usr/X11R6/lib. Run ldconfig Add /usr/X11R6/bin to your PATH environment variable in .bash_profile or /etc/profile. The statement should look something like PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin and be placed before the export PATH statement. Expand the PKG_CONFIG_PATH so that other packages can find Xorg libraries. Add the following line to .bash_profile for root user: export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig Run source ~/.bash_profile Set up your mouse: ln -s psaux /dev/mouse Adjust the symbolic link as necessary for other types of mice. For instance, a serial mouse on the first serial port would be linked to ttyS1. Create the xorg.conf file with cd ~ Xorg -configure The screen will go black and you may hear some clicking of the monitor. This command will create a file, xorg.conf.new in your home directory. Edit xorg.conf.new to suit your system. The details of the file are located in the man page man xorg.conf. Some things you may want to do are: Section "Files". Change the order of the font paths searched. You may want to put 100dpi fonts ahead of 75dpi fonts if your system normally comes up closer to 100 dots per inch. You may want to remove some font directories completely. Section "Monitor". Specify the VertRefresh and HorizSync values if the system does not automatically detect the monitor and its values. Section "InputDevice". You may want to change the keyboard autorepeat rate by adding Option "Autorepeat" "250 30". Section "Device". You may want to set some of the options available for your selected video driver. A description of the driver parameters is in the man page for your driver. Section "Screen". Add a DefaultDepth statement such as: DefaultDepth 16. In the SubSection for your default depth, add a modes line such as: Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768". The first mode listed will normally be the starting resolution. Test the system with Xorg -config ~/xorg.conf.new You will only get a gray background with an X-shaped mouse cursor, but it confirms the system is working. Exit with Control-Alt-Backspace. If the system does not work, take a look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see what went wrong. Move the configuration file to its final location mv ~/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf Create .xinitrc cat > ~/.xinitrc << "EOF" # Begin .xinitrc file xterm -g 80x40+0+0 & xclock -g 100x100-0+0 & twm EOF This provides an initial screen with an xterm and a clock that is managed by a simple window manager, Tab Window Manager. For details of twm, see the man page. When needed, Xorg creates the directory /tmp/.ICE-unix if it does not exist. If this directory is not owned by root, Xorg delays startup by a few seconds and also appends a warning to the logfile. This also affects startup of other applications. To improve performance, it is advisable to manually create the directory before Xorg uses it. Add the file creation to /etc/sysconfig/createfiles that is sourced by the /etc/rc.d/init.d/cleanfs startup script. cat >> /etc/sysconfig/createfiles << "EOF" /tmp/.ICE-unix dir 1777 root root EOF Start X with startx to get basic functional X Window System. At this point, you should check out the X Window Components at .