Modular X server bugs, annoyances and solutions (Part 1)

Voltago · 2005-12-28 sticky --Earthwings

Anyone who wants to give X11R7 a spin should first read this migration guide by spyderous:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~spyderous/xorg-x11/migrating_to_modular_x_howto.txt
Now that a meta ebuild for necessary xorg components is available, don't emerge xorg-server directly, rather do

thubble · Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 9:00 pm Post subject:

A problem a few of us have been having is that gnome-settings-daemon fails to start under modular xorg. I get this error on startup:

Voltago · Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2005 2:07 pm Post subject:

Update: The new libX11 snapshot solved my kaffeine problem (my kaffeine-the-video-player-problem, not the other one). W00t! I'll celebrate this with a double espresso...

n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355

I've just given the modular X a try today, and I've been unable to get it to last long enough to get a window manager. It seems to be doing okay while it first boots up, then I get maybe half a second of the mouse cursor, and then the server shuts down, seemingly without any related error. I'm using the i810 driver, if that helps at all.

There are a few things suspicious in the logfile...

For instance, there's this:

n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355

Voltago · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2005 11:20 am Post subject:

I'm using i810 too and it's working fine (i915GM hardware). Try my xorg.conf (you might want different screen and input options, of course).
Don't worry about font path error messages, they're mostly harmless.

n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355

n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355

n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355

Ah, well it's always the simplest explanation. There were a few libraries my apps were linked against (libXft was a main one) which didn't get built with all the other new X lib packages. Once I had taken care of all that, things became groovy. Thanks for the input, though!

chtephan · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2005 8:40 pm Post subject:

A lot of dependencies are still missing, but I hand-emerged everything that was missing. I've been using it since I saw the first ebuilds and helped to fix a bunch of annoying bugs. Now it works nearly as well as the old monolithic release. The latest ATI driver snapshot is a bit shaky (borks text mode) and the whiteglass theme package forgets to create a bunch of symlinks but that's it for me. (and it doesn't work with a hardened gcc due to the "-z now" ld flags, undefined references between modules and xserver)

I'm wondering , the Xorg devs don't seem to put a lot of work into the modular release, they're mostly just waiting for people to find and fix the bugs. I hope this will change once the monolithic tree is really dead. I think there's really a lot of cleanup work to be done.

n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355

Voltago · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2005 9:02 pm Post subject:

chtephan · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2005 9:05 pm Post subject:

I didn't mean to be unfair. The next release, the RC1 is meant to be a real release candidate, not just a testing release. Did you look on their bugzilla or mailing lists? There's not much going on. The biggest changes are coming from the monolithic tree and really not much effort is going into the modularization. I'm just saying, not criticising. In fact most of the work is already done and it's working very well. It's just a bunch of details that shows when testing stuff. My impression is that only a few devs have put out the packages but most core devs are still working using the monolithic tree. This is just a sign that they are significantly under-manned and can really use help.

: Their schedule is perhaps a bit over-optimistic:

http://wiki.x.org/wiki/X11R6970ReleasePlan
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1690

rapsure

I am having difficulty getting firefox to run java applets. When I go to a website that has a java applet firefox crashes. I get this:

rapsure · Posted: Sat Sep 10, 2005 6:49 am Post subject: Odd indeed

I am posting a reply to my own message. To fix the locale issue you need to get xorg-macros.m4 and put that file into /usr/share/aclocal/. You can get that from the Xorg cvs server from the macros util or you can just wait until x11-misc/util-macros is updated in portage. Then you need to re-emerge libX11. The problem is that one of the variables is not being set to run a program to parse the text files, and so you end up with no locale support at all.

This will effect your computer also if you have the latest libX11 installed. What really needs to happen is to have CVS sync for x11-misc/util-macros.

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Hindi ko naintindihan, pakiulit. Sometimes my code works.

Voltago · Posted: Sat Sep 10, 2005 9:39 am Post subject:

I've been wondering about the locale stuff myself and I wonder if it would be better to open a bug for this issue or just wait until the new upstream version comes along...

rapsure · Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 3:38 am Post subject: submitted

I submitted the bug report, and I assigned it to spyderous. I hope it gets resolved quickly
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Hindi ko naintindihan, pakiulit. Sometimes my code works.

Sprotte · Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 1:30 pm Post subject:

dlopen will not load chips driver

From the log:

dlopen: (path) chips_drv.so: undefined symbol: CHIPSMMIOSync

(EE) failed to load module "chips" (loader failed, 7)

Looks like its using the dlloader instead of the ELF loader I used previously. There is however no dlloader use flag anymore.

I am using the vesa driver atm which loads fine.

I researched:

from xorg wiki, "switched to dlib based module loader"

from gentoo hardened xorg guide (I do not use hardened), (some things about -nonow CFLAG and -z now LDFLAG) - my LDFLAGS dont have -z now and in the xserver ebuild there is no trace of the -nonow CFLAG)

from fdo (I think) "dlloader issues" being that (among others) the chips drivers 8+16 overlay mode is not supported, and the workaround being not to use the overlay (I never ever used it, I dont even have kernel framebuffer enabled, I use a VGA text console)

and from various places I gather that some drivers are not working with the dlloader (but were with the ELF loader).

In my old xorg 6.8.2, I _disabled_ the dlloader via USE flag. So I always used the elf loader, and never had problems...

now is there a way to get the xserver ebuild to build it _without_ the dlloader (using the old default ELF loader) OR to set the miraculous -nonow CFLAG (as described in the gentoo hardened xorg guide)?

Should I file a bug somewhere?

Another (small) problem is mouse related, in quake2/icculus I just spin around and the mouse doesnt work. Initially q2 aborted with a message about libXxf86dga missing, so I emerged that. Now the game starts, but mouse input is borked. Quake1 works, as well as wine/starcraft. (this bug is obviously less important)

Otherwise all my apps work OK, firefox et al (GTK2 apps) initially complained about missing libXinerama and Xrandr, which I emerged to solve the problem. Of course, I dont use xinerama. I should probably just reemerge them without. (tested with recompiling openbox, libs are no longer missed)

All in all, it works. Even loads a bit faster I think. But I need the chips driver.

n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355

Sprotte · Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 3:23 pm Post subject:

I read the guide, but I dont plan to use any old parts from 6.8.2.

well. is there any way to build the xorg-server with the elfloader instead of the dlloader?

Is it relevant if I have pic and/or pie use flags set?

"nm -D chips_drv.so" tells me that CHIPSMMIOSync is undefined (U). There are quite a lot of "U" in the list. I am not gosu enough to really understand that kind of stuff... can that be the problem? should not dlopen just ignore that? If I understood correctly, that is what the -nonow flag is good for.

How to make the server and all modules build with the -nonow CFLAG? Should I just add that to the ebuild?

n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355

n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355

In other news, I've noticed something very odd about my modular X install. My copy-on-select/paste-on-middle-button doesn't seem to actually work. Nothing gets pasted when I click on the middle button. I've checked with xev, and X is registering the the button clicks properly.

Is there some extra library which has to be installed for this to work?

Piper Dawn · n00b Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 6

Before I submit this as a bug, I thought I'd run it past the forum:

I can switch back to a command console with Ctrl+Alt+F* just fine, but as soon as I go back to the X window the computer hangs. My normally centred background is aligned to the top-right of the monitor, and neither conky nor fluxbox are shown. The screen blanks out a few seconds later and the system won't respond to any input (such as Ctrl+Alt+Backspace).

Is anybody else having this problem? It seems to be a showstopper that should have been picked up by now, but I'm willing to accept it as an error in my (admittedly quite clumsy) installation.

Phlogiston · Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 12:43 pm Post subject:

Before I'll try this modular thing... Is anyone out there using this with nvidia driver? Got it anyone to work?

Greets
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n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355