[plug] XFree86 4.0 Problems with Debian

[Christian]

On Mon, Jan 15, 2001 at 04:36:41PM +0800, Christian wrote:
 
> It *seems* like it's trying to execute the old X servers but I've
> changed over the /etc/X11/Xserver file to point to /usr/bin/X11/XFree86
> and I've even renamed my old X servers to totally remove them from the
> picture.  I've now got gdm to work but only by moving the normal
> /usr/bin/X11/X SUID helper application (which is what is causing the
> problem I think) to another name and creating a symbolic link from
> /usr/bin/X11/XFree86 to /usr/bin/X11/X but obviously this isn't exactly
> optimal so if anyone has any idea what the problem might be then please
> let me know.

Just an update to let everyone know about this.  Thew /etc/X11/Xserver
file is no longer used, instead /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config acts as the
configuration file for the wrapper X server.  However this file doesn't
actually specify which server to use instead it appears the new
standard for Debian is that /etc/X11/X is a symlink pointing to the X
server to use so in case anyone is upgrading from 3.3.6 to 4.0.2 knowing
that might come in handy.  Also, if you're running GDM (possibly kdm/xdm
too) then you'll find that you can't log in this way if you don't have
the xutils package installed so that's another trap.

Finally, has anyone else had the x86cfg program crash on them
repeatedly?  Basically I found that running x86cfg would start the X
server using the basic VGA defaults, display a window (presumably for
configuring things) and then crash.  I didn't even realise it was
crashing until I re-ran it from an xterm and found that it was giving an
"Illegal instruction" error message.  Hopefully the next version of the
Debian packages will fix this but, in the meantime, the best solution to
the problem I've found is to use the Debian configuration tools.
Running "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" allows you to set all the
defaults that you want and get's a new server up and running quite
easily.

Hope this helps someone else in the future...

Regards,

Christian.


P.S. If anyone remembers my problems last year getting the S3 Trio3D to
run under 3.3.6, 4.0.2's support for this card works beautifully.  MUCH
faster than the SiS 6326 I was using as a substitute!