Roell's X11r4 server (success?)

[James Van Artsdalen]

>From scanning this newsgroup going back to May, I don't see many
success stories with Roell's X11r4 server.  I haven't had success
yet either, but I think I'm close.  I'm running Dell unix, which is
similar to ISC 2.0.2.

1. The posted patches have space/tab mismatches with the MIT X11r4
   source.  I retrieved a copy of the patch from unido, but it too was
   munged.  Berklib.c in the X library was missing the line

long (* _libX11_times)() = 0;

   which I assume is needed.  Also, throughout the libraries
   constructs like "extern foo = 0" existed.  It's not clear what was
   desired - I removed the "extern" keyword.

2. Shared libraries don't work.  I get an error from ld(1) when I try
   to link programs with the shared libraries:

ld fatal: cannot combine NOLOAD input sections with other input sections;
possibly caused by shared library address space overlap

   I see no overlap in the shared library addresses.

3. The toplevel Makefile doesn't ensure that TOP always has the right
   value.  I had to hack GNU make to ignore the "Makefile" dependency to
   get it to work.

4. I got a patch from RMS to work around a bug in the MIT source:
   something like foo(\"abc\") was used, and the X sources expected
   the leading quote to be somehow magically quoted, or the trailing
   quote to be unqouted.

5. If I say "Xibm -dev /dev/mouse", the pointer doesn't move.  The
   mouse device is OK: "od -x < /dev/mouse" does what is expected.
   The output looks like PS/2-style mouse data packets (three bytes).
   Is this that different from what a serial mouse uses (I've got a
   Microsoft bus mouse)?

When I build without shared libraries, I can run Xibm.  I start it,
the screen clears to the "grey" background pattern, and then nothing
happens.  Occasionally the system beeps, but keys otherwise do
nothing.  CapsLock and NumLock light their respective keys, but
ScrollLock does not.  Ctrl-Alt-Del does cause the server to exit, and
the screen blank function works, so the server is not hung.  Are the
Alt-Sysreq-Fx keys supposed to switch between virtual consoles?

xinit gives an error "Can't open display" when I try to run it.

Any comments or suggestions?  How much of the trouble in the
non-shared library is due to lack of a serial mouse?  How much trouble
is it to convert to a bus mouse?
-- 
James R. Van Artsdalen          james at bigtex.cactus.org   "Live Free or Die"
Dell Computer Co    9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759         512-338-8789