X on freeBSD

yaruar

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Having woefull times at home trying to get FreeBSD up and running.

Install worked ok the second time around and the machine logs in fine. xorgcfg runs fine and all devices seem to be set ok.

However when i run X it all goes a bit pearshaped. X windows loads and i can move the cursor, but nothing else appears and nothing responds. It's not a system lock as i can ctrl alt Fx to bring up another session, but X just sits there. That and i can't get it to autoload gnome with exec gnome-session in the .xinitrc file..

Hmm, this is puzzling me, any ideas out there?

And before anyone suggests installing Linux, i can do that, this is a learning experience for me (and also because i need a proper server OS...)
 

Draylor

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Anything in the X log file?
Anything displayed on the terminal you started X from?

Sounds like it could be just a driver failing to load properly or similar, or it could be working perfectly and just have a problem with gnome.

Have you tried putting something trivial into the .xinitrc (say xterm) rather than adding the complexity of gnome before you know its working?

(Ill ignore the 'proper server OS' comments, and resist asking why a server needs X :) )
 

yaruar

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Draylor said:
Anything in the X log file?
Anything displayed on the terminal you started X from?

Sounds like it could be just a driver failing to load properly or similar, or it could be working perfectly and just have a problem with gnome.

Have you tried putting something trivial into the .xinitrc (say xterm) rather than adding the complexity of gnome before you know its working?

(Ill ignore the 'proper server OS' comments, and resist asking why a server needs X :) )

I've tried it without gnome and it doesn't seem to like that very much. Just does the same, loading up X and then giving me a cursor which responds and nothing else working.

I'm going to give the reinstall a go again, i suspect some of the dependencies for X are missing, and it's only about a 10 minute reinstall. Unfortunately the only manual i've got for BSD is based on the 3.2 release which sucks somewhat and i can't find out much online.

I'm not at home now, i was working on this last night. But will be giving it another go tonight.

The fun part however is going to be getting Samba configured and working and running a wireless media server over it.. I'm looking forward to that part ;)
 

Draylor

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yaruar said:
I've tried it without gnome and it doesn't seem to like that very much. Just does the same, loading up X and then giving me a cursor which responds and nothing else working.
But with no .xinitrc isnt that what youd expect? No window manager, no X apps being started: just X running with a cursor and nothing else.

The fun part however is going to be getting Samba configured and working and running a wireless media server over it.. I'm looking forward to that part ;)
Samba tends to be very straightforward to configure, especially since it sounds like what youll need from it will need 30 seconds of tweaking to the default configuration.
 

TdC

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tbh it seems to me that either you don't have a windowmanager running or your mouse setup is fu><ord or both. last time I looked freeBSD uses the /dev/sysmouse generic to drive your rodent, though the config within X can be a pain sometimes. you should manage it though, I did too. it was installing extra fonts where I always failed miserably :/ for a look at fbsd desktops in action you could have a wee look here. there are several of mine in there.

samba is pish easy to install. you'll prolly need to enter "samba=YES" or something like it in /etc/rc.conf and configure smb.conf to share what you want it to. you'll not need to explicitly share your homedir and stuff cos Samba will do that for you cos it can share $HOMES automatically and pull your username directly out of doze's attempts to connect to it.
 

yaruar

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TdC said:
tbh it seems to me that either you don't have a windowmanager running or your mouse setup is fu><ord or both. last time I looked freeBSD uses the /dev/sysmouse generic to drive your rodent, though the config within X can be a pain sometimes. you should manage it though, I did too. it was installing extra fonts where I always failed miserably :/ for a look at fbsd desktops in action you could have a wee look here. there are several of mine in there.

samba is pish easy to install. you'll prolly need to enter "samba=YES" or something like it in /etc/rc.conf and configure smb.conf to share what you want it to. you'll not need to explicitly share your homedir and stuff cos Samba will do that for you cos it can share $HOMES automatically and pull your username directly out of doze's attempts to connect to it.

I had a few issues with the mouse after the first install, X was barfing with a no pointer device error, which got solved with a quick config change.
 

TdC

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ro><! but is it working now?
 

yaruar

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TdC said:
ro><! but is it working now?

nah, reinstalled it from scratch again with just the basic settings and did apt_get -r gnome2 which seemed to run just fine.

Then created a .xinitrc with exec \usr\X11R6\bin\gnome-session
and ran X only to have it do exactly the same.

All a bit odd really.
 

phlash

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yaruar said:
Then created a .xinitrc with exec \usr\X11R6\bin\gnome-session
and ran X only to have it do exactly the same.

Are those really back slashes - doh!?

What about reducing .xinitrc to say:

echo 'Hello from .xinitrc'
/usr/X11R6/bin/xterm

Switch back to the tty you started X from (how are you doing this BTW? xinit or startx or what?), you should see the 'Hello..' text if .xinitrc is running, and you should get an xterm to play with, or an error message on the tty saying why it failed to run.

HTH,
Phil.
 

yaruar

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TdC said:
please say those aren't backslashes Yaruar! :(

they weren't on the system, just typed them incorrectly here.. can't close my windows head at work!
 

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