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

<!DOCTYPE linuxdoc PUBLIC "-//XFree86//DTD linuxdoc//EN" [
<!ENTITY % defs SYSTEM "defs.ent"> %defs;
]>

<article>

<title>Installation Details for XFree86&trade; &relvers;
<author>The XFree86 Project, Inc
<date>30 June 2000

<ident>
$XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Install.sgml,v 1.6 2000/07/02 02:35:27 dawes Exp $
</ident>

<abstract>

How to install XFree86.

</abstract>

<toc>

<sect>Introduction
<p>
This document contains information about installing the XFree86 binaries
as provided by The XFree86 Project.

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


<sect>Downloading the XFree86 &relvers; binaries
<p>
We, The XFree86 Project, provide XFree86 &relvers; binaries for a range
of operating systems at our
<![ %snapshot; [
<url name="ftp site"
url="ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/snapshots/&relvers/binaries/">.
]]>
<![ %release; [
<url name="ftp site"
url="ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/&relvers/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).

<p>
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 <tt>Xinstall.sh</tt> script, and run it as in the
following example  to find out which binary distribution you should
download.

<tscreen><verb>
sh Xinstall.sh -check
</verb></tscreen>

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.

Once that is done 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.

<quote><verb>
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
</verb></quote>

NOTES:
<itemize>
  <item>Some web browsers have a problem downloading the <tt>extract</tt>
	utility correctly.  If you encounter this problem, download the
	version called <tt>extract.exe</tt> instead.  This should fix the
	problem.  (This is not a DOS/Windows executable.)

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

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

</itemize>

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

<quote><verb>
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
</verb></quote>

NOTES:
<itemize>
  <item>Some distributions may have some additional optional tarballs.

</itemize>

If you miss some and want to install them later, go to the
<ref id="manual-install" name="Manual Installation"> section.

<sect>Installing XFree86 &relvers; using the <tt>Xinstall.sh</tt> script
<p>
We strongly recommend that our XFree86 &relvers; binaries be installed
using the <tt>Xinstall.sh</tt> 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 <ref
id="manual-install" name="below">.

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 location with enough space).  Use the cd command to change to
that directory and then run the installer script as follows:

<tscreen><verb>
sh Xinstall.sh
</verb></tscreen>

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 aforementioned, then the installer will tell you which ones are
missing and ask you to download them before proceeding.

<sect1>Questions the installer may ask
<p>
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 <tt>$DISPLAY</tt> 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 problems, 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
<bf>strongly</bf> 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 <tt>/usr/X11R6</tt> 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 overwritten 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
existing configuration files.  As of XFree86 version 3.9.18, the run-time
configuration files are installed by default under <tt>/etc/X11</tt>
instead of under <tt>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11</tt>.  The installer will move
the existing ones for you and create the necessary symbolic links.  If
you don't want to have these configuration files under <tt>/etc/X11</tt>,
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 <tt>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11</tt> 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 situations.  It is our new default.  It makes it easier to
share the <tt>/usr/X11R6</tt> 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
customisations 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 configuration files can all be found in the
<tt>Xetc.tgz</tt> tarball.  See the <ref id="manual-install" name="section
below"> about manual installation for information about extracting them
separately.

After the configuration files have been dealt with, the other mandatory
components 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 "<tt>ldconfig</tt>" on systems that require it, so
that the newly installed shared libraries are accessible.  Then
the <tt>fonts.dir</tt> files in some directories 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
(<tt>/usr/lib</tt> and <tt>/usr/include</tt>), 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
<tt>rstart</tt> 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:

<tscreen><verb>
rm -f /usr/bin/rstartd
ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/rstartd /usr/bin/rstartd
</verb></tscreen>

<sect1>After the installation is complete
<p>
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 two
ways to create a basic X server configuration file for XFree86 &relvers;.
One is to run the <tt>xf86config</tt> utility.  Another is to use the
new <tt>-configure</tt> X server option:

<tscreen><verb>
XFree86 -configure
</verb></tscreen>

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

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).

<sect>Installing XFree86 &relvers; manually<label id="manual-install">
<p>
This section describes how to manually install the XFree86 &relvers; binary
distributions.  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
temporary 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
"<tt>extract</tt>" 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 <tt>extract</tt> 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.

<sect1>A new installation
<p>
The simplest case is when there is no existing X installation.  The
installation procedure for this case is as follows:

<tscreen><verb>
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
</verb></tscreen>

<sect1>Installing over an old installation
<p>
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 <tt>extract</tt> command is
executable, and also link it to the name "<tt>gnu-tar</tt>" so that it
can be used as a regular <tt>tar</tt> command:

<tscreen><verb>
chmod +x extract
rm -f gnu-tar
ln extract gnu-tar
</verb></tscreen>

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

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

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

<tscreen><verb>
rm -fr /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/subdir
ln -s /etc/X11/subdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
</verb></tscreen>

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

<tscreen><verb>
mkdir /etc/X11/subdir
ln -s /etc/X11/subdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
</verb></tscreen>

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

<tscreen><verb>
mkdir tmpdir
./extract -C tmpdir Xetc.tgz
</verb></tscreen>

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

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

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:

<tscreen><verb>
./extract -C /usr/X11R6 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
</verb></tscreen>


</article>