X and Fluxbox :: KDrive Servers.

I was looking over at www.rule-project.org, and apparently it's possible to compile the kdrive servers for more than just Xvesa and Xfbdev.

I tested their precompiled Xvesa and it worked with a bit of hackery. This got me thinking. One of the strengths in DSL are these lightweight X11 servers. Rather than provide a full-blown Xfree86.dsl for those cards that need specific drivers for support (for example, the intel i810 which works poorly under Xvesa and Xfbdev), why not offer up some extensions for these alternate drivers?

Obviously, if you need the binary nvidia drivers or the like, this isn't going to work, but at a meg or less a piece we could easily make one or more extensions to get some of the less default-friendly laptops and the like online.

I'd be happy to knock up the extensions and submit them, but I need a little additional information as to what is needed beyond one of the Xservers in order for it to function properly as anything other than root.

Devs, geniuses, lend a contributer your brain for a few minutes?

Anyone?

I've gotten the server to run as root, but if I try to run them as user (with setuid permissions even) they hang themselves and take the console that launched them along for the ride.

I was unable to get their precomiled servers to work without getting a segfault.

Please describe in detail the steps that you took to get it working.

I'd love to get a few small extensions like Xi810.dsl or Xati.dsl built and working.

Yeah, I'm trying to get an i810 going myself. Shall we call that our test case to keep things simple?

I downloaded a copy and ran it with sudo:

sudo Xi810 -screen 1024x768x32

It came up clean, it of course didn't read a .xinitrc or anything, but I got a default X background and X cursor. Killed it with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE with no issues. So it works as a server under DSL v2.2, but the trick is to get it to run with the right permissions and as a part of the whole startx/xinit cycle so it picks up .xinitrc and such.

When I tried running it as user dsl, it just hung badly enough to toast the console I ran it from. It basically just keeps flashing "awaiting connection from Xserver" and will not die. Kill -9 as root will kill it off, but the console is then non-responsive.

(hint for aspiring Kdrive tinkerers, enable ssh on your test rig before you start messing with it unless you like the sound of reboots)

As per the Kdrive pages, I've set permissions to 4711 (chmod +s) and ownership to root:root...with no additional effect.

I've tried running mkwriteable manually and copying it into place. Made no difference.

At a guess, it's capable of running but the server is not currently being called by the startx/xinit scripts properly for some arcane reason. This, admittedly, is where my knowledge starts getting grey quickly. I've tried all sorts of combinations of symlinking it into place (in /usr/X11R6/bin), but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

I'm willing to keep swinging at it with some help though. Would love to see these in the extension library. Care to go for dual credit on the extension, cbagger? ;-)

I know you guys are trying to get i810 going with KDrive but I do have a working i810xfree.dsl extension if either of you are interested. I made it awhile back for my Dell Inspiron 2500 lappy that has this dreaded chipset.

Chris

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