[comp.unix.i386] AT&T Open Look under ISC X server

misko@abhg.UUCP (William Miskovetz) (08/07/90)

A month or so ago I posted asking if anyone had been able to run
AT&T's 386 Open Look on an Interactive system using Interactives X
server(s).  Well, after a great deal of assistance from some people
I can say I have it running and thought I would share what is/was
necessary in case anyone else wishes to run Open Look on an Interactive
system.

First, you must be sure that you are installing Open Look 2.0.  Version
1.0 will not work.  Actually you need the release 2.0 update disk
also.  I believe is just installs a new olwm, but the one I tried on an
original 2.0 diskette failed from time to time.

You can install Open Look using ISC's sysadm installpkg or just
installpkg.  In order for Open Look to install, you need to edit 
/usr/lib/installed/CONTENTS and add a line which has "Network Support"
on it.  The AT&T install script checks this file for that phrase and
if it doesn't find it, it aborts.  The AT&T install script will issue 
a warning about a missing mouse driver, but it can be ignored.

After the Open Look End User System has been installed you will need
to make some changes.  Note that Open Look installs itself in /usr/X, so
you do not need to worry about clobbering any of the X files that ISC
has installed.  Now, when I installed Open Look, one of the steps failed.
I never checked out why, but you must have the following in /dev.
There must be a directory /dev/X which is chmod 777.  Mine is
owned my root and has a group of sys.  In /dev/X you need to do a
mknod X.null c 2 2; chmod 666 X.null;chown root X.null;chgrp sys X.null;
This device seems to be needed.  If the device does not exist, Xdaemon
will not start.  Xdaemon seems to be needed, but I'm not sure what it's
function is.  The install script makes an init entry for Xdaemon so when
you reboot Xdaemon is started.  If you do not reboot, then start it by
hand with /etc/init.d.xwin start.

To run Open Look, you need to have TCP/IP installed.  I run ISC's TCP/IP
with the "no" driver.  I have no ethernet board installed.  I just use the
loopback driver.  My /etc/hosts file looks like this:
127.1	local localhost fred abhg
Now my machine is really called abhg, but fred is required to run Open Look.
You need to trick Open Look into believing that it is on a network connection.
It checks to see if the DISPLAY environment variable is set to unix, local,
and the output of uname.  If any of these are true, it thinks you have a local
connection and trys the AT&T local connection route which is different from
the ISC local connection route.  You will get an error like 
"can't open display" if it is trying to make a local connection.

Next, make sure that you have a /usr/X/lib/net/tcp directory.  If it is
not there, just rename the 'it' directory to 'tcp'.  Then edit 
/usr/X/lib/Xconnections and add the line:
*	*	tcp

Finally, you need to rebuild the Open Look fonts and add them to your font
search path.  I did this by doing (in the bourne shell):
cd /usr/X/lib/fonts/bdf/Xol
mkdir /usr/lib/X11/fonts/ol
for i in * do
bdftosnf $i >/usr/lib/X11/fonts/ol/`basename $i '\.bdf'`.snf
done
/usr/bin/X11/mkfontdir /usr/lib/X11/fonts/ol
xset +fp /usr/lib/X11/fonts/ol

That should recreate the Open Look fonts into a directory called
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/ol.  It then builds the fonts.dir file and adds
that directory to the servers font path.  I also added FILE_NAMES_ALIASES
to the fonts.alias file, but I don't remember if that was required or not.
Getting the fonts to be found was the most difficult part it seemed.

You should be now ready to run Open Look.  cd to /usr/X/bin and make sure
you have no other window manager running.  Then set DISPLAY=fred:0 (or any
other name you have in your hosts file as long as it's not your machine name).
Then just ./olwsm &

Hopefully, Open Look will start up.  I'm running it on ISC's 8514/A
server.  Open Looks get's the stats on the server you are using and attempts
to select a font (a-h) which corresponds to your resolution.  It seems to
guess correctly in my case, and I believe it works with the VGA server also.

If anyone trys to do this and has problems, please feel free to contact me. 
I know it works here, and I've helped one other person get theirs running so
it is repeatable, but I may have left out a step someplace.

One word of caution, do not try to start AT&T's xterm.  It will either 
crash your server or just die out.  Also, you may want to look at the
keyboard resources menu when you get olwm started (olwsm starts it).  In
there, control-c is defined as a "cut" operation so control-c might
not interrupt your programs (if you use control-c rather than DEL).

Check out train which is also in /usr/X/bin.  It will provide hours of 
frustration :-)  Also, olpixmap is interesting.  There are many pixmaps 
that came with either the end user or the development set and they are 
fun to look at.  i haven't been able to play xfish which comes with 
AT&T's Open Look.  It doesn't recognize my mouse presses.  I don't know 
if this is a problem with xfish, or an incompatibility with the ISC X 
server.  The olfm (Open Look file manager) really does work.  You are
able to grab a pixmap and drop it on olpixmap it olpixmap acts as if you've
told it to use that file.

Anyway, this is long enough.  Any questions, e-mail please.

Bill Miskovetz
{uunet!lll-winken, apple!mathworks}!abhg!misko
misko@mathworks.com
abhg!misko@lll-winken.llnl.gov