Download location (HTTP): Download location (FTP): ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.3.0/source/ Version used: 4.3.0 Package size: 137 MB Estimated Disk space required: 633 MB Estimated build time: 75m (667 MHz) |
XFree86 is a freely redistributable open-source implementation of the X Window System. XFree86 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).
XFree86 depends on: freetype-2.1.3, expat-1.95.6 and libpng-1.2.5 |
There are several files that need to be fetched from the download location:
X430src-1.tgz 10736 KB X430src-2.tgz 7776 KB X430src-3.tgz 12077 KB X430src-4.tgz 12604 KB X430src-5.tgz 4286 KB X430src-6.tgz 7886 KB X430src-7.tgz 9099 KB |
The first three packages are the XFree86 programs, the fourth and fifth are fonts, the sixth is normal documentation, and the seventh is hardcopy documentation. There are also two packages doctools-1.3.1.tgz, which contain programs to regenerate hardcopy documentation, and utils-1.1.0.tgz, which contain gnutar and zlib which are already installed on an LFS system.
To check your downloads for integrity, download the SUMS.md5sum file. Then:
md5sum X430src* > md5sums && diff md5sums SUMS.md5sum |
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 http://dri.sourceforge.net 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). Additionally NVidia provides their own closed source binary drivers. If you do enable DRI here, make sure you select the video card(s) you want to support as a module.
If you made any changes to the kernel configuration, recompile with
make dep && make bzImage && make modules && make modules_install |
Copy /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage and /usr/src/linux/System.map to /boot, edit /etc/lilo.conf appropriately and run lilo. If you use grub, edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and add the new kernel to the boot menu.
Note: If you build XFree86 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.
Although XFree86 will compile without a host.def file, the following file is recommended for customizing the installation. Start from the xc directory.
cat > config/cf/host.def << "EOF"
/* Begin XFree86 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. 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 -fomit-frame-pointer -march=i686 */
/* #define DefaultGcc2AxpOpt -O2 -mcpu=ev6 */
/* #define DefaultGcc2PpcOpt -O2 -mcpu=750 */
/* The following definitions are normally set properly by XFree86's scripts.
* You can uncomment them if you want to make sure. ************************/
/* #define HasMTRRSupport YES */ /* Enabled in kernel see kernel docs*/
/* #define HasMMXSupport NO */ /* Any i586 or above */
/* #define HasKatmaiSupport NO */ /* PIII SSE instuctions */
/* #define Has3DNowSupport NO */ /* AMD instructions */
/* This setting reduces compile time a little by omitting rarely used input
* devices. You can find the complete list in config/cf/xfree86.cf ********/
#define XInputDrivers mouse void
/* VIDEO DRIVERS ***********************************************************/
/* If you are sure you only want the drivers for one or a few video cards,
* you can delete the drivers you do not want. *****************************/
#define XF86CardDrivers mga glint nv tga s3 s3virge sis rendition \
neomagic i740 tdfx savage \
cirrus vmware tseng trident chips apm \
GlideDriver fbdev i128 nsc \
ati i810 AgpGartDrivers DevelDrivers ark \
cyrix siliconmotion \
vesa vga \
dummy XF86OSCardDrivers XF86ExtraCardDrivers
/* FONT SERVER AND LIBRARY SETTINGS ****************************************/
/* These settings are the defaults ***************************************/
/* #define BuildFontServer YES */ /* For GhostScript Print Server*/
/* #define SharedLibFont YES */
/* #define CompressAllFonts YES */
/* #define GzipFontCompression YES */
/* These settings ensure we use our libraries ******************************/
#define HasFreetype2 YES
#define HasExpat YES
#define HasLibpng YES
#define HasZlib YES
/* The font path can be redefined in the XF86Config file *******************/
/*
#define DefaultFontPath $(FONTDIR)/misc/,$(FONTDIR)/75dpi/,\
$(FONTDIR)/100dpi/,$(FONTDIR)/Type1,$(FONTDIR)/local,\
$(FONTDIR)/TrueType,$(FONTDIR)/CID,$(FONTDIR)/Speedo
*/
/* INTERNATIONAL FONTS. Change to YES if you need any of them. These are
* the defaults. ***********************************************************/
/* #define BuildCyrillicFonts NO */
/* #define BuildArabicFonts NO */
/* #define BuildISO8859_6Fonts NO */
/* #define BuildGreekFonts NO */
/* #define BuildISO8859_7Fonts NO */
/* #define BuildHebrewFonts NO */
/* #define BuildISO8859_8Fonts NO */
/* #define BuildKOI8_RFonts NO */
/* #define BuildJapaneseFonts NO */
/* #define BuildJISX0201Fonts NO */
/* #define BuildKoreanFonts NO */
/* #define BuildChineseFonts NO */
/* DOCUMENTATION SETTINGS **************************************************/
/* These setting are the defaults. *****************************************/
/* #define BuildLinuxDocHtml NO */ /* X Docs in Html format */
/* #define BuildLinuxDocPS NO */ /* PostScript format */
/* #define BuildAllSpecsDocs NO */ /* Various docs */
/* #define BuildHtmlManPages NO */
/* GENERAL SETTINGS: You generally want to leave these alone when
* building X on an LFS system *********************************************/
#define GccWarningOptions -pipe /* Speed up compiles */
#define TermcapLibrary -lncurses
#define XprtServer YES /* Needed by realplayer */
#define XnestServer YES
#define XAppLoadDir EtcX11Directory/app-defaults
#define VarLibDir /var/lib
#define XFree86Devel NO
#define FSUseSyslog YES
#define ThreadedX YES
#define HasPam NO
#define SystemManDirectory /usr/share/man /* Instead of /usr/man */
#define HasLibCrypt YES
#define InstallXinitConfig YES
#define InstallXdmConfig YES
#define ForceNormalLib YES
#define BuildSpecsDocs NO
/* End XFree86 host.def file */
EOF |
Edit the file for your hardware and desires.
Install XFree86 by running the following commands:
WORLDOPTS="" make World 2>&1 | tee xfree-compile.log && make install && make install.man && ln -sf /usr/X11R6/bin /usr/bin/X11 && ln -sf /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 /usr/lib/X11 && ln -sf /usr/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 XFree86. To do this, perform the following:
cd programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/os-support/linux/drm/kernel &&
make -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 |
| Warning |
If you recompile or upgrade your kernel, you will need to re-copy the driver modules to the kernel module library and rerun depmod. |
WORLDOPTS="" make World 2>&1 | tee xfree-compile.log : This command runs multiple makefiles to completely rebuild the system. WORLDOPTS="" disables the default setting to continue after encountering an error. 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.
Note: When rebuilding XFree86, 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 /usr/X11R6/bin /usr/bin/X11, ln -sf /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 /usr/lib/X11, and ln -sf /usr/X11R6/include/X11 /usr/include/X11 : These commands are present to enable other (broken) packages to build against XFree86. We do this even though the 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 -f Makefile.linux : This builds the XFree86 compatible kernel modules.
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 modules where the kernel can find them.
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. The statement should look something like PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin and be placed before the export PATH statement.
Run
source ~/.bash_profile |
Set up your mouse:
cd /dev ln -s psaux mouse |
Create the XF86Config file with
cd ~ XFree86 -configure |
Edit XF86Config.new to suit your system. The details of the file are located in the man page man XF86Config. 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 "Module". Remove or comment out some of the modules. The "glx" and "dri" sections are not operational until we install DRI below. Leaving modules in does not hurt anything.
Section "InputDevice". You may want to change the keyboard autorepeat rate by adding Option "Autorepeat" "250 30".
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
XFree86 -xf86config ~/XF86Config.new |
Move the configuration file to its final location
mv ~/XF86Config.new /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 |
Create .xinitrc
cat > ~/.xinitrc << "EOF" # Begin .xinitrc file xterm -g 80x40+0+0 & xclock -g 100x100-0+0 & twm EOF |
Start X with
startx |
The XFree86 package contains the X Windows system for Linux (and other operating systems). It includes the X server, fonts, xterm, a simple window manager (twm), various utilities, video output drivers, and various input drivers including the mouse and keyboard.
XFree86 also contains libraries and header files for development of X Windows programs.
Note: The following list of programs is not comprehensive. The full list is in /usr/X11R6/bin. For additional information about these programs, see the respective man page.
XFree86 is the X11R6 implementation of the X Windows server.
An interactive program for generating an XF86Config file for use with XFree86 X servers.
A tool to configure XFree86 that can be used to either write the initial configuration file or make customizations to the current configuration.
A script to initialize the X session. It runs xinit.
This program is used to start the X Window System server.
A Tab Window Manager for the X Window System.
A terminal emulator for X.
A window information utility for X.
An X11 server performance test program.
A program to list fonts available to the X server.
A video mode tuner for XFree86.
A system load average display for X.
A scientific calculator for X.
Clock programs for X.
A utility for modifying keymaps and pointer button mappings in X.