[comp.windows.x] X on SPARCs

mtoy@sgi.com (Michael Toy) (10/10/89)

I have a friend without NET access who is trying to get X
stuff to build on a SPARCstation running 4.0.3 SunOS
and he is failing.  ANybody who has some clue and would like
to share their knowledge as to how to do this, please
E-Mail me.

Michael Toy

tuula@gvlf6-j.gvl.unisys.com (Tuula Kunzman) (10/11/89)

I would like to also know if people have been successful in running
X on a Sun Sparc machine....If so, are there any gotcha's to be
concerned about?

Thanks in advance....

Tuula

erc@pai.UUCP (Eric Johnson) (10/11/89)

In article <355@gvlv2.GVL.Unisys.COM>, tuula@gvlf6-j.gvl.unisys.com (Tuula Kunzman) writes:
> I would like to also know if people have been successful in running
> X on a Sun Sparc machine....If so, are there any gotcha's to be
> concerned about?
> Tuula

PAI installed X11 R3 on a Sun 386i, running Sun OS 4.0.x.  Those
very same sources compiled fine (except for one problem, below)
and currently run fine on a spanking new SPARCStation-1.  Performance
on the SPARC far outstrips the 386i.

The sources we used were on the release tape picked up by a colleague
at the last USENIX meet.  I believe this was X11 R3 from MIT with
patches 1-10.

The only problem appears to be a stack space issue.  The file cfbbitblt.c
in the server/ddx/cfb bombed out cc on the optimizer pass with an iropt error.

In talking with Sun, I believe this is related to having too little
swap space. (My SPARC came with the OS pre-installed--a nice friendly
thing for Sun to do--but the default swap size is a little small for
what X wants.)  I merely "hand-compiled" the given file, using a
lower optimization (-O1) and everything is now hunky-dory.

I also believe that Sun's X11/NeWS is out (or will soon be out)
and so you may want to get this from Sun (as the performance will
probably be tuned to the Suns, and you can run those neat NeWS/Sunview
programs, too).

Hope this helps,
-Eric

-- 
Eric F. Johnson, Prime Automation, Inc. 
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