jimc@pitcairn.ACA.MCC.COM (Jim Christian) (06/06/90)
I pulled Athula Herath's compilation of Thomas Roell's server from the ESIX ftp directory on tek4310.kent.edu (131.123.2.10). Realizing that it was compiled under Interactive 2.0.2, I tried to run it under ESIX anyway (we're all System V COFF, right??? :-) ). I noticed a number of things: * It wouldn't respond to the keyboard. Perhaps a difference in the keyboard drivers of Interactive and ESIX? Or am I doing something wrong? * It seems very fast for things like resizing and moving windows, and general bit-blitting, at least compared to the ESIX server. My .twmrc file was set up so I could run some programs without the keyboard, and the two or three keyboardless clients I tried seemed to work fine. * I had to look in the server patch code to realize that the mouse port is user-selectable instead of hard-wired to port com1. This (and other command line args) probably ought to be documented in a more user-oriented place like a the README file. I used a Logitech serial mouse, and it worked fine. * When the server exits, the screen is frozen completely black. I can issue commands at the keyboard, but I can't see what I'm typing. The only way to reset it seems to be to reboot. (I have a simple program which tries to init the screen in 43 line mode and which often works when the screen has been wedged by other programs; but it doesn't seem to work in this case.) * I had to edit the first line in the /usr/lib/fonts/misc/fonts.alias file to read fixed 6x13 Otherwise, the server complains about not being able to find the fixed font, and it dies. * All three fonts directories should be present (100dpi, 75dpi, and misc), or the server complains about not being able to set the default font path, and it dies. * Typing Control-C on the keyboard killed the server (and froze the screen as above). Probably related to the first problem; the Control-C is probably getting converted to a SIGINT by the ESIX driver, instead of being caught by the server first. If someone out there is willing to port the server to ESIX (or if someone can point out what I'm doing wrong to cause the above problems), I would be most happy (I'm a bit short on time and disk space to do a port myself.) For some reason which ESIX support people haven't been able to determine, my ESIX X11R3 server dies at random times on my system (anywhere from 30 seconds to an hour; they claim I'm the only one on the planet who's ever complained about this problem), so I'm hoping to obtain a more stable server. I think Thomas' port might do the trick (it ran quite a while last night without faltering), if it would only recognize the keyboard under ESIX. I'm looking forward to Thomas' promised all-new VGA server. From what I've seen of his current port, he's done a fine job with IBM's code. I hope the new server will quickly find its way to ESIX and other non-Interactive machines once it becomes available. Thanks, Jim Christian
stdtm@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Timothy A. Melton) (08/11/90)
Has anyone gotten Athula's R4 server to run under ESIX? I finally decided to give it a whirl, but when I try to start the server, it can't find a needed shared lib. I have all of the archives from sequent.kent.edu installed in the right places (assuming they untar where they ned to be) so what could I be missing? Please respond via e-mail if you have any ideas on what my problem could be, or if you have gotten it up under ESIX. Thanks in advance, Tim Melton stdtm@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu -- ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Timothy A Melton University of Oklahoma Graduate Student Deptartment of Chemical Engineering