                           Information for Solaris

              David Holland, modified by Marc Aurele La France

                               2004 August 18

1.  The VT-switching sub-system in Solaris x86

The virtual terminal sub-system is a undocumented, and unsupported feature of
Solaris x86 releases 2.1 through 7.  It is no longer present in Solaris 8 and
later releases.  Therefore if you use virtual terminals, you do so at YOUR
OWN RISK.

Virtual terminals are not available in Solaris SPARC, and their availability
has been removed in Solaris8 x86.

When available, the virtual terminals of Solaris work basically the same way
as most other SVR4 VT sub-systems.  However, there are a number of limita-
tions documented below.

First, if you are running a Solaris 2.4 x86 system, and you want VT's, you
will have to create the necessary devices first, so become root.

Verify the chanmux device driver's major number is 100:

          # grep -i chanmux /etc/name_to_major
          chanmux 100
          #

If the number after 'chanmux' is anything but 100, I would suggest you imme-
diately abort your attempt to create virtual terminals, and learn to live
without them.

However, if it is 100, then as root type the following commands to create the
maximum allowable number of virtual terminals.

          # cd /dev
          # mknod vt01 c 100 1
          # mknod vt02 c 100 2
          # mknod vt03 c 100 3
          # mknod vt04 c 100 4
          # mknod vt05 c 100 5
          # mknod vt06 c 100 6
          # mknod vt07 c 100 7

There is no need for a reconfiguration boot.

Secondly, for both 2.1, and 2.4 x86 systems, add a few lines to the inittab
to enable logins on them.

(Note, do NOT make a mistake here, you could lock yourself out of the system)

     --------------------->Snip Snip<-----------------------------------------------
     v1:234:respawn:/usr/lib/saf/ttymon -g -h -p "`uname -n` VT01 login: " -T AT386 -d /dev/vt01 -l console
     v2:234:respawn:/usr/lib/saf/ttymon -g -h -p "`uname -n` VT02 login: " -T AT386 -d /dev/vt02 -l console
     v3:234:respawn:/usr/lib/saf/ttymon -g -h -p "`uname -n` VT03 login: " -T AT386 -d /dev/vt03 -l console
     v4:234:respawn:/usr/lib/saf/ttymon -g -h -p "`uname -n` VT04 login: " -T AT386 -d /dev/vt04 -l console
     ---------------------->End Here<-----------------------------------------------

These four lines enable four VT's on Alt-SysReq-F1 through Alt-SysReq-F4.

Then execute the command 'init q' to immediately enable the virtual termi-
nals.

The keys used for VT switching are as follows:

     Alt-SysReq-F1 through Alt-SysReq-F7 enable VT screens 1-7 respec-
     tively (if the VT is active).

     Alt-SysReq-n enables the next active VT screen.

     Alt-SysReq-p enables the previous active VT screen.

     Alt-SysReq-h returns to the console.

If you are using virtual terminals, you must leave at least one free for use
by the Xserver.

Limitations of the virtual terminal sub-system under Solaris x86:

There are only a total of 8 available VT's (7 normal VT's + 1 console) not
the usual 15.  If you have all 8 allocated, and you attempt to allocate a
additional VT you will panic the system.  (This bug is worked around in the
Solaris X11R6.8.1 Xserver.)

From a programming stand point, they work pretty much as documented in the
AT&T Unix System V/386 Release 4 Integrated Software Development Guide, how-
ever a number of ioctl() calls are broken.

2.  Notes for building X11R6.8.1 on Solaris

  1.  Both GCC, and the Sun Studio compilers are supported by X11R6.8.1.  The
      minimum recommended GCC release is 2.7.2.  Some earlier GCC's are known
      to not work and should be avoided.

      You should also make certain your version of GCC predefines `sun'.  If
      needed edit /usr/local/lib/gcc-lib/*/*/specs, and modify the *prede-
      fines: line.

      On SPARCs, regardless of the compiler you use, ensure it generates
      32-bit binaries.  At this time, 64-bit binaries will probably not work.

  2.  Also on SPARCs, you may be able to build the old deprecated Xsun*
      servers for older cg* graphics devices by adding "#define XsunServer
      YES" or "#define Xsun24Server YES" or "#define XsunMonoServer YES" to
       xc/config/cf/host.def.  These servers are no longer maintained nor
      supported and may not build in this release.

  3.  A Threaded Xlib compiled with GCC has subtle problems.  It'll work 98%
      of the time, however clients will occasionally exhibit strange hangs.
      Most notably image viewers such as xv-3.10 exhibit this problem.

      It is recommended that you set ThreadedX in ~xc/config/cf/host.def to
      NO, if you are using GCC.  Sun's compilers do not have this problem.
      Whether this behaviour still exists with newer GCC's has not been veri-
      fied.

  4.  To build X11R6.8.1 with GCC you need gcc and (optionally) c++filt from
      GNU binutils.  Don't install gas or ld from GNU binutils, use the one
      provided by Sun.

      You might need to setup a /opt/SUNWspro/bin directory containing sym-
      bolic links named cc, CC, and c++filt pointing respectively to the
      actual gcc, g++ and c++filt commands.

  5.  If you are using Sun compilers to compile the X11R6.8.1 distribution,
      you need to modify your PATH appropriately so the Sun compiler tools
      are available.  Normally, they should be in /opt/SUNWspro/bin

  6.  You MUST put /usr/ccs/bin at the front of your PATH.  There are known
      problems with some GNU replacements for the utilities found there.  So
      the /usr/ccs/bin versions of these programs must be found before any
      possible GNU versions.  (Most notably GNU 'ar' does not work during the
      build).

3.  Notes for running Xorg on Solaris

  1.  Depending on the release or architecture of Solaris you are running,
      you might need to install an OS driver for an aperture device.

      Under Solaris x86 2.5 and later, there's a system driver (/dev/xsvc)
      that provides this functionality.  It will be detected automatically by
      the server, so you don't need to install the aperture driver.

      For older Solaris x86 and for Solaris SPARC releases, the source for
      this driver is included in xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/etc/apSo-
      laris.shar of the source distribution.  This file can usually also be
      found in the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/etc directory when Xorg is installed.
      Building, and installing the driver is relatively straight forward.
      Please read its accompanying README file.

  2.  If you have not made the Virtual Terminal devices, you will need to
      specify the terminal device to run the Xserver on.  The correct device
      is vt00 so your xinit command would look like so:

                xinit -- vt00

      If you have made the virtual terminal devices you do not need to spec-
      ify the VT to run the Xserver on.

  3.  For old releases of Solaris you will probably want to set your
      LD_LIBRARY_PATH to /usr/X11R6/lib:/usr/openwin/lib:/usr/dt/lib.
      Including /usr/X11R6/lib in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH is probably not neces-
      sary, however it doesn't hurt. :)

      Including /usr/openwin/lib in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH is recommended on
      older releases because some Sun supplied binaries were not compiled
      with LD_RUN_PATH set properly at compile time.

      Motif and CDE applications may require /usr/dt/lib in your
      LD_LIBRARY_PATH too.

  4.  Xqueue is NOT supported under Solaris.  The includes necessary for
      Xqueue are available, however the driver does not seem to be in the
      kernel.  (Go figure)

  5.  If you want to use xdm with Solaris, extract the files from the shar
      file in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/etc/XdmConf.svr4 into a temporary directory.
      The README file tells where the individual files need to be installed.
      Be sure to read through each file and make any site-specific changes
      that you need.

4.  Known bugs, and work arounds with Solaris

  1.  The Solaris 2.1 for x86 OpenWindows filemgr does not work against a
      X11R5 Xserver, it probably will also not work against a X11R6 Xserver.
      Attempting to 'Drag and Drop' a file causes the filemgr to abort with
      an 'X error'

      Solaris x86 2.4 does not have this problem.

      There is no known work around.

  2.  The SPARC port is still quite new, so instability is to be expected
      (and reported!).  It might even have broken some aspects of the x86
      port.

5.  Bug Notification

Bug reports should be reported using the bugzilla.freedesktop.org using the
xorg product or sent to <xorg@freedesktop.org>.

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