path: root/xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/Install

                 Installation Details for XFree86[tm] 4.0.2

                          The XFree86 Project, Inc

                              15 December 2000

                                  Abstract

     How to install XFree86.

1.  Introduction

This document contains information about installing the XFree86 binaries as
provided by The XFree86 Project.

The XFree86 binaries that we provide for UNIX-like OS's (Linux, the BSDs,
Solaris, etc) are packaged in a platform-independent gzipped tar format (aka
"tarballs" identified by the .tgz suffix).  Along with the binaries we pro-
vide a customized version of the GNU tar utility called "extract" and an
installation script.  We recommend that these be used to install the bina-
ries.

2.  Downloading the XFree86 4.0.2 binaries

We provide XFree86 4.0.2 binaries for a range of operating systems at our ftp
site <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.0.2/binaries/>.  Often during
releases our ftp site is heavily loaded.  Instead of downloading directly
from us we recommend that instead you use one of our mirror sites.  Another
advantage of using our mirror sites is that some of them support http access
(ours does not).

Our binaries are organized by sub-directories which correspond to each of the
OS/platforms for which we provide binaries.  First go to the sub-directory
that represents your OS platform. In some cases (e.g., Linux) there may be a
number of choices depending on the architecture or libc version your platform
uses.  In all case we recommend that you first download the Xinstall.sh
script, and run it as in the following example to find out which binary dis-
tribution you should download.

     sh Xinstall.sh -check

The output of this utility tells you which is the correct set of binaries for
you to download.  If you are careful with this step you will save yourself a
lot time and trouble from NOT downloading an incompatible distribution.

NOTE: the Xinstall.sh script must be downloaded in binary mode, otherwise it
won't run correctly.  If you get lots of "command not found" messages when
you try to run it, then it is most likely because the script wasn't down-
loaded in binary mode.  Some web browsers won't do this for files of that
name, so we also have a copy of it called "Xinstall.bin", and most browsers
should download that correctly.  When downloading it under this name, select
"save as" on your browser, and save the file under the name "Xinstall.sh".

Once you're run the Xinstall.sh script and found which binary distribution is
suitable for your system, download the necessary files.  The twelve (12)
mandatory files for all installations are listed below.  If you have not
downloaded all of the files, the installer script will complain.

          1.   Xinstall.sh      The installer script
          2.   extract          The utility for extracting tarballs
          3.   Xbin.tgz         X clients/utilities and run-time libraries
          4.   Xlib.tgz         Some data files required at run-time
          5.   Xman.tgz         Manual pages
          6.   Xdoc.tgz         XFree86 documentation
          7.   Xfnts.tgz        Base set of fonts
          8.   Xfenc.tgz        Base set of font encoding data
          9.   Xetc.tgz         Run-time configuration files
          10.  Xvar.tgz         Run-time data
          11.  Xxserv.tgz       XFree86 X server
          12.  Xmod.tgz         XFree86 X server modules

NOTES:

   o Some web browsers have a problem downloading the extract utility cor-
     rectly.  If you encounter this problem, download the version called
     extract.exe instead.  This should fix the problem.  (This is not a
     DOS/Windows executable.)

   o A few distributions don't have or require the Xvar.tgz tarball.  If it
     is present in the binaries sub-directory for your platform, then it is
     required.

   o The Darwin/Mac OS X distribution doesn't have or require the Xmod.tgz
     tarball.

   o Some distributions may have additional mandatory tarballs.  While rare,
     the installer script will tell you if any are missing.

The following thirteen (13) tarballs are optional.  You should download the
ones you want to install.

          1.   Xfsrv.tgz        Font server
          2.   Xnest.tgz        Nested X server
          3.   Xprog.tgz        X header files, config files and compile-time libs
          4.   Xprt.tgz         X Print server
          5.   Xvfb.tgz         Virtual framebuffer X server
          6.   Xf100.tgz        100dpi fonts
          7.   Xfcyr.tgz        Cyrillic fonts
          8.   Xflat2.tgz       Latin-2 fonts
          9.   Xfnon.tgz        Some large bitmap fonts
          10.  Xfscl.tgz        Scalable fonts (Speedo and Type1)
          11.  Xhtml.tgz        HTML version of the documentation
          12.  Xps.tgz          PostScript version of the documentation
          13.  Xjdoc.tgz        Documentation in Japanese

NOTES:

   o Some distributions may have some additional optional tarballs.

If you miss some and want to install them later, go to the Manual Installa-
tion (section 4., page 1) section.

3.  Installing XFree86 4.0.2 using the Xinstall.sh script

We strongly recommend that our XFree86 4.0.2 binaries be installed using the
Xinstall.sh script that we provide.  There are a lot of steps in the manual
installation process, and those steps can vary according to the platform and
hardware setup.  There is a description of the manual installation process
for the most common cases below (section 4., page 1).

You must login as the super user (root) to run the installer script.  Place
all of the downloaded files into a single directory (choose a temporary loca-
tion with enough space).  Use the cd command to change to that directory and
then run the installer script as follows:

     sh Xinstall.sh

Answer the prompts as they come up.  If you are missing something that is
required, the installer may tell you to install it before trying again.  If
the problem is that you did not download all of mandatory files aforemen-
tioned, then the installer will tell you which ones are missing and ask you
to download them before proceeding.

3.1  Questions the installer may ask

The installer asks some questions that may not have obvious answers.  The
information here should help you answer them.  In most cases, apart from the
first question, the default answers should be OK.

If you run the installer from within an X session (the installer checks if
$DISPLAY is set), you will be warned that doing so is not a good idea.
Unless you have a good reason for knowing that this won't be a problem, you
should exit your X session, including stopping xdm or equivalent if it is
running, before continuing.  If you ignore this warning and run into prob-
lems, well, you were warned!

If you have an existing X installation, you will be warned that proceeding
with this installation will overwrite it.  Only those things that are part of
our standard distribution will be overwritten.  Other X applications that you
may have installed will not be removed.  Some configuration files may be
overwritten though, but the installer should prompt you before doing so.  As
the opening greeting says, it is strongly recommended that you backup any
existing installation before proceeding.  If you want your old applications
to still be there after you've installed, don't do the "backup" by simply
renaming your old /usr/X11R6 directory.  It is better to make a copy of it,
and then install over the top of the original one.  If you run into problems
and want to revert to the old installation, you can then delete the overwrit-
ten one and copy the saved version back.

During the first part of the installation over an existing version, the
script may remove some old files or directories that would get in the way of
the new installation.  It will list which files/directories have been
removed.  If none are listed, then none were removed.

The next step when installing over an existing version is to check for exist-
ing configuration files.  As of XFree86 version 3.9.18, the run-time configu-
ration files are installed by default under /etc/X11 instead of under
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11.  The installer will move the existing ones for you and
create the necessary symbolic links.  If you don't want to have these config-
uration files under /etc/X11, then you should answer "no" when asked about
it.  Answering "no" here also means that the new configuration files will be
installed in the old /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 location.

Note: for the rare systems that don't have symbolic links, this question will
not be asked.  The default answer is "yes" because that is best for most sit-
uations.  It is our new default.  It makes it easier to share the /usr/X11R6
directory between multiple hosts, and allows it to be mounted read-only.  If
you don't need these features, then you can safely answer "no" if you don't
want them moved.

When installing over an existing version, you will be prompted before each
set of configuration files is installed.  If you haven't made any Customisa-
tions to your existing configuration files, then you can safely answer "yes"
for each of these.  If you have made customisations, you can try answering
"no".  If you run into problems later, you may need to manually merge your
customisations into the the new version of the configuration files.  The con-
figuration files can all be found in the Xetc.tgz tarball.  See the section
below (section 4., page 1) about manual installation for information about
extracting them separately.

After the configuration files have been dealt with, the other mandatory com-
ponents of the binary distribution will be installed.  This should proceed
without any user intervention.

If you downloaded any of the optional components, the installer will ask you
about each one before it is installed.  The default answer is "yes".  If
there are any that you've since decided that you don't want to install,
answer "no" when prompted.

After that is done, the main part of the installation is complete.  The next
steps are to tidy up some aspects of the installation.  The first of these is
to run "ldconfig" on systems that require it, so that the newly installed
shared libraries are accessible.  Then the fonts.dir files in some directo-
ries are updated so that the fonts can be accessed correctly.  Next, the
installer checks to see if your system has a termcap file or terminfo files.
If it finds the former, it tells you how you may update the entries in that
file.  If it finds the latter, it asks you if you want it to update them for
you.

You may be asked if you want to create links for the GL libraries and header
files.  The OpenGL standard on some platforms (Linux in particular) says that
these should be installed in the standard system locations (/usr/lib and
/usr/include), so the installer offers to create the appropriate links.  If
you're running Linux, you should probably answer yes.  For other platforms it
is your choice.  If you already have another version of libGL in /usr/lib,
answering "yes" will remove it and replace it with a link to the version we
supply.  The installer will show you a listing of any existing versions
before asking if they should be replaced.

Finally, the installer asks you if you want a link created for the rstart
utility.  On most modern systems the link isn't essential, so the default
answer is "no".  Answer "yes" if you know that you need it.  If you find
later that you need it, you can create it easily by running:

     rm -f /usr/bin/rstartd
     ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/rstartd /usr/bin/rstartd

3.2  After the installation is complete

The next step is to configure the X server.  That is covered in detail in an
as-yet unwritten document :-(.  In the meantime, there are three ways to cre-
ate a basic X server configuration file for XFree86 4.0.2.  One is to run the
xf86config utility.  Another is to run the xf86cfg utility.  The third option
is to use the new -configure X server option:

     XFree86 -configure

Note that if you are running Darwin/Mac OS X, there is no step 3 :-).  You
should skip this step, as configuration is not required or possible.  The X
server configuration file is not used on Darwin/Mac OS X.

The X server config file (XF86Config) format has changed compared to 3.3.x.
Also, its default location is now /etc/X11.  Finally, there is now only one X
server for driving video hardware, and it is called "XFree86".  Once you're
satisfied with the operation of the new X server, you can safely remove the
old XF86_* and/or XF98_* X server binaries from /usr/X11R6/bin.

After the X server configuration is done, it may be advisable to reboot,
especially if you run xdm (or equivalent) or the font server (xfs).

4.  Installing XFree86 4.0.2 manually

This section describes how to manually install the XFree86 4.0.2 binary dis-
tributions.  You should only use this method if you know what you're doing.
The information here covers some common cases, but not every possible case.

Put all of the downloaded files into a single directory (choose some tempo-
rary location with enough space).  Become the super user (root).  All of the
following commands should be run as root, and they should be run from the
directory that has all of the downloaded files.  The "extract" utility should
be used to unpack the tarballs.  This is a customised version of GNU tar that
has the gzip code built-in, and which has a different usage when run under
the name "extract".  One important thing that extract does that most versions
of tar do not do by default is that it unlinks existing files before writing
new ones.  This is important when installing over an existing version of X.
If you choose to use some other utility to extract the tarballs, you're on
your own.

4.1  A new installation

The simplest case is when there is no existing X installation.  The installa-
tion procedure for this case is as follows:

     chmod +x extract
     mkdir /usr/X11R6
     mkdir /etc/X11
     ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 X[a-df-uw-z]*.tgz
     ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 Xvfb.tgz    # If you are installing Xvfb
     ./extract -C /etc/X11 Xetc.tgz
     ./extract -C /var Xvar.tgz
     ln -s /etc/X11/app-defaults /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
     ln -s /etc/X11/fs /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
     ln -s /etc/X11/lbxproxy /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
     ln -s /etc/X11/proxymngr /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
     ln -s /etc/X11/rstart /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
     ln -s /etc/X11/twm /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
     ln -s /etc/X11/xdm /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
     ln -s /etc/X11/xinit /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
     ln -s /etc/X11/xsm /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
     ln -s /etc/X11/xserver /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
     /sbin/ldconfig /usr/X11R6/lib       # For Linux
     /sbin/ldconfig -m /usr/X11R6/lib    # For FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
     /usr/X11R6/bin/mkfontdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc

4.2  Installing over an old installation

If you have an existing installation of X, you should make a backup copy of
it before installing the new version over the top of it.

Before doing anything else, make sure the extract command is executable, and
also link it to the name "gnu-tar" so that it can be used as a regular tar
command:

     chmod +x extract
     rm -f gnu-tar
     ln extract gnu-tar

The first part of the procedure is to move the old run-time config files from
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11 to /etc/X11.  Create /etc/X11 if it doesn't already exist.
For each of the following sub-directories (app-defaults, fs, lbxproxy, prox-
ymngr, rstart, twm, xdm, xinit, xsm, xserver) that you want to move, check
that there is a sub-directory of this name in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11.  Create a
sub-directory of the same name under /etc/X11, then copy the files over by
running:

     ./gnu-tar -C /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/subdir -c -f - . | \
       ./gnu-tar -C /etc/X11/subdir -v -x -p -U -f -

For each subdirectory that is moved, remove the one under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
and create a symbolic link to the new location:

     rm -fr /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/subdir
     ln -s /etc/X11/subdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11

For those subdirectories that didn't already exist under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11,
create one under /etc/X11 and create the symbolic link to it:

     mkdir /etc/X11/subdir
     ln -s /etc/X11/subdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11

Once that is done, extract the config files from the Xetc.tgz tarball into a
temporary directory:

     mkdir tmpdir
     ./extract -C tmpdir Xetc.tgz

and then copy each sub-directory over to the installed location:

     ./gnu-tar -C tmpdir/subdir -c -f - . | \
       ./gnu-tar -C /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/subdir -v -x -p -U -f -

If you have customised any config files in your old installation, you may
want to omit those sub-directories, or copy selected files over by hand.

Once that's done, the main part of the installation can be done:

     ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 `pwd`/X[a-df-uw-z]*.tgz
     ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 Xvfb.tgz    # If you are installing Xvfb
     ./extract -C /var Xvar.tgz
     /sbin/ldconfig /usr/X11R6/lib       # For Linux
     /sbin/ldconfig -m /usr/X11R6/lib    # For FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
     /usr/X11R6/bin/mkfontdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc

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