Re: CLI-kiddies/advocates ?
From: Dances With Crows (danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows_at_gmail.com)
Date: 11/27/05
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Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 16:44:09 -0600
On Sun, 27 Nov 2005 20:01:55 GMT, Aragorn staggered into the Black Sun
and said:
> On Sunday 27 November 2005 18:20, news@absamail.co.za wrote:
>> An important application dating back to 1999, which runs under X and
>> which I used to run under RedHat6.2, I now need to run on a newer
>> box.
> You'd get more help if you were to say what application this might be.
> Yet you prefer going off on a rant, which is not exactly going to get
> you much help /or/ sympathy...
Aragorn has hit the nail on the head here.
>> With great pain [waste of time] recently I got X-setup for
>> Mandrake-9. But the important application doesn't run.
? Mandrake had an interactive X setup thingy even before X 4.0 was
invented. If you did the regular Mandrake install, that interactive X
setup thing started automatically.
And if an X application doesn't run, the *first* thing you should do is
open an xterm/konsole/eterm, then try to start the X app from that
terminal window. X apps tend to output diagnostic info to standard
error when they can't start, and that diagnostic info typically leads to
a place to start looking.
>> debugging method is to copy the old RH6.2 installation with the
>> special application to the newer box, on a separate partition.
IIRC, Redhat 6.2 used X 3.3.6. Mandrake 9 used X 4.1 or 4.2. The
config file format changed quite a bit between X 3.n and X 4.n, though
all the 4.n Xs are supposed to use the same config file format.
Specifically, X 3.n had the "svga" X module, while X 4.n split that
module up into a bunch of video-card-specific modules.
>> Just to rediscover the ID of the 'X-setup' command, I took one hour
>> guessing, testing logging-notes.
> apropos XFree86
> ... and you would have gotten a useful list of utilities and /man/
> pages.
Er. That "useful list" would've been many screens long, which would've
confused the hell out of the OP.
>> And now 5 minutes later I've forgotten [need to search notes again],
>> is it called Xconfig, X86setup, X11config .........dog$hit ...or
>> what?
"X -configure" will autoprobe the graphics card and write a mostly
usable config file in all X 4.n releases. The main problem with it is
that it defaults to 8-bit color, which you don't want. It's pretty
simple to edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 or /etc/X11/xorg.conf with your
favorite text editor and set the DefaultColorDepth to 16 or 24. Also,
it may not autoprobe the resolutions you want properly; adding
"1280x1024" or whatever to the Modes lines is not difficult though.
> If you want to master your system, then you must _learn_ how it works.
True. All distros have something in their paper manuals or online
documentation called "setting up X" or "configuring the GUI
environment". That's the first place the OP should've looked.
>> And the non-CLI advocates will say that I should only be using the
>> latest cartoon-based [something] which doesn't need to know the ID of
>> the X-setup command. How then do I handle my old applications ?
Er... huh? I don't get what you mean here. If you got X running, it's
possible that this old application requires some compatability libraries
that weren't installed. Another poster pointed that out; the cure in
that case is to find the lib*compat* packages on your distro CDs and
install them all. The core X protocol *has* *not* *changed* for
years; the new features are all in X extensions. The problem you're
having may be due to compatability libraries, or if the app is really
old, it may require 8-bit color. To find out what the problem is, start
the X app from an xterm/konsole and reproduce the error messages you get
in a followup.
>> A main reason for WinTel's success is the respect for users
>> investment, by allowing old applications to live on.
> Microsoft has _no_ respect whatsoever for any user's investments. All
> they care about is that you buy their products, which partly explains
> why their products are of such low quality.
Ah yes. That's why there are several messages/week in
comp.periphs.scanners from people who complain that their parport
scanners, which worked fine under Doze9x, won't work at all in DozeXP.
Backwards combatability is always a crapshoot under Microsoft OSes,
particularly for things that touch the hardware directly like device
drivers for unpopular peripherals.
Ah well. Try the stuff I mentioned and other people have mentioned, and
post the error messages from the problem app's startup. Or you can
keep complaining. One of these approaches has a much better chance of
solving the problem than the other. HTH,
-- Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong http://www.brainbench.com / "He is a rhythmic movement of the -----------------------------/ penguins, is Tux." --MegaHAL
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