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Re: Problems with XFree86 4.0.2

On Tue, May 22, 2001 at 11:48:12PM +0200, email@hidden wrote:
I have installed XFree86 4.0.2 on my Pismo PowerBook with Darwin 1.3.1. I
downloaded the binary files from ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.0.2/binaries/Darwin/ and installed them. After typing startx the X11 System starts up as
expected. After a while the default window manager appears.

So far so good.

But when I try to type something into the console windows nothing happens,
the keyboard seems to be locked. The mouse moves well and window
activation and moving works to. What the hell is going on here?

Actually 4.0.3 fixes very little on Darwin except a few security bugs. The problem is that since Darwin 1.3.1 and Mac OS X 10.0 the kernel keymapping on portables is often empty. This is a "bug" but probably not worth fixing, since Apple is moving to a new keymapping mechanism for Darwin. Currently only XFree86 uses the old kernel keymapping.

As a workaround the current version of XFree86 allows you to read the keymapping from a file, instead of querying the kernel. Apple has helpfully provided many keymapping files in /System/Library/Keyboards/. To do this, use the -keymap option when starting from the command line. For example, "startx -- -keymap Francais.keymapping" will start the X server and load the French keymap. (You probably want USA.keymapping.) XDarwin looks in the appropriate places for the keymapping files, so you don't need to specify a path.

You can get a precompiled binary containing this feature from http://sourceforge.net/projects/xonx/. Download and install the XAqua0.6.tgz tarball following the directions provided there. (Note: You must install on top of a complete XFree86 4.0.2 or 4.0.3 distribution. This is not a stand alone package.) The main purpose of this release is to test the ability of XFree86 to run in parallel with Aqua, but it also includes an updated X server for running from the Darwin console.

--Torrey



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