I decided to upgrade my system to the latest Debian. I am learning the value of using my distribution's package management system. Installing stuff from source is fun, but its nice to get the auto-update features of a package management system, especially for things like X11. I clobbered everything but my home partition, and started anew. I got the whole system back up again good as new within a day. The difficulties I had are logged here:
Attempted to install ALSA. Deselect told me that alsa suggests alsa-module. I searched for an alsa-module driver that matched my kernel (2.4.18-bf2.4) but was unable to find one. I tried installing the 2.4.16-686 alsa-module package instead. That depended on installation of the kernel-image-2.4.16-686 package. Installing that gave me some "are you sure you know what you are doing?" warnings which I bypassed. After that, my system would not boot. It got stuck on a "kernel panic" message. I booted with my rescue disk, removed the 2.4.16-686 packages (both kernel-image and alsa-module) and manually fixed the symlink from /vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-bf2.4 and reran lilo. I can boot now, but no luck yet on sound
I installed X-windows with dselect, but after configuring it, it would not start.
(II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libvgahw.a
(II) Module vgahw: vendor="The XFree86 Project"
compiled for 4.1.0.1, module version = 0.1.0
(==) NV(0): Using HW cursor
(**) NV(0): Using framebuffer device
(II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/linux/libfbdevhw.a
(II) Module fbdevhw: vendor="The XFree86 Project"
compiled for 4.1.0.1, module version = 0.0.2
(II) Unloading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/linux/libfbdevhw.a
(II) Unloading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libvgahw.a
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.
Fatal server error:
no screens found
I disabled the "UseFBDev" option in my /etx/X11/XF86Config-4 file, and the problem went away.
Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "nv"
# Option "UseFBDev" "true"
EndSection
My first attempt to install the latest Mozilla nightly failed with a library linkage error. I fixed it by changing to /usr/lib and linking ln -s libstdc++-3-libc6.2-2-2.10.0.so libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2
I have found that I often have to create such symlinks when trying to run Linux programs that are distributed as dynamicly linked binaries. I am pleased to say that it works very well. Cross-version compatability in newer libraries like libc6 seems quite good.
gpm mouse type autops2 fails for my mouse. I had to manually select a type with gpmconfig, guessing and checking till I found one that worked. I am now using exps2... I also nneded to set the "repeat" type to "raw" and switch the mouse device in my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file to use /dev/gpmdata instead of /dev/psaux ... [gpm is still not working on the console...]
stinkin xdm! when did I ask for xdm!? I want to boot to a text console, not a silly x-thingy! Debian's X-windows package depends on xdm, so I had to manually disable it my renaming /etc/rc2.d/S99xdm to /etc/rc2.d/K99xdm [I think this is because I chose x-windows-system in dselect when what I really wanted was x-windows-system-core]
Mozilla is using the wrong size of fonts, making many things appear too large... I think the trouble is in my xfs-xtt config. I oicked a 100dpi option when I probably should have picked 75dpi ... nope... ooh! my xfs-xtt is not being recognized at all! Oh! xfs-xtt is listening on a different port, so it can co-exist with the standard xfs. It is being run as:
/usr/bin/X11/xfs-xtt -daemon -user nobody -port 7110
So I just need to alter my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file to check that port instead of 7100
Well, now my xfs seems to be working, but mozilla is still displaying fonts too big for some reason
Okay, I figured out that it was using the 100dpi fonts when it should have been using the 75 dpi fonts. I switched their order in my /etc/X11/fs-xtt/config file and now mozilla displays the menu fonts at a reasonable size
# paths to search for fonts
catalogue = /var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/CID,
/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType,
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/:unscaled,
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/:unscaled,
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled,
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled,
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/,
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/
# in decipoints
default-point-size = 120
# x1,y1,x2,y2,...
default-resolutions = 75,75,100,100
My fvwm2 was leaving the ALT+TAB window up when I released the ALT key. i had to press ENTER to confirm my selection. I fixed this by adding the SelectOnRelease argument to my Windowlist command in my .fvwm2rc file
Key Tab A M WindowList Root c c NoDeskSort, NoGeometry, SelectOnRelease Alt_L
So I am still fighting with ALSA. I read somewhere that I should not need to install the alsa-drivers package. I installed the alsaconf package and ran the utility to pick my soundcard. That created /etc/alsa/modutils/0.5 which I then copied to /etc/modutils/alsa and then I ran update-modules . However, it still keeps telling me "Starting ALSA sound driver (version none):modprobe: Can't locate module snd"
Ohh... looks like I need the asla-source package... now to figure out how to install it the "debian" way...
Okay, installing the sources was relatively painless, I just followed the instructions in /usr/doc/alsa-source/ . Now I know how to compile the kernel Debian-style... unfortunately it was still failing. I finally realized that the names of the sound card modules changed slightly between versions 0.5 and 0.9 of ALSA, so I needed to edit my /etc/modutils/alsa file, changing snd-card-emu10k1 to snd-emu10k1
And then it worked.
# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. --- # --- ALSACONF verion 0.4.3b --- alias char-major-116 snd alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1 alias char-major-14 soundcore alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0 alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=1 snd_device_mode=0660 snd_device_gid=29 snd_device_uid=0 options snd-emu10k1 snd_index=0 snd_id=CARD_0 snd_dac_frame_size=128 snd_adc_frame_size=64 # --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---