[RULE] kdrive usage report

[Richard Kweskin]

Hello All

The following seems to hold true whether kdrive (or tinyx) is "manually" added as we first used it or the Tinyx option in Slinky was chosen (and post install scripts allowed to run as intended) or even with Michael's latest recompiled Tinyx package which includes xkb:

Overwhelmingly positive: Smaller footprint on the hd, smaller resources used when up (than XFree86) and yet provides a full (or nearly) X base upon which Fluxbox or Icewm or even KDE seems very happy. Though any configuration has its hardware limits, Xvesa (the only server I have used so far) has allowed 800x600 resolution with a color depth of 24 on two old S3 cards (one ViRGE which also worked with XFree86 4.20 and one 968 which wouldn't) both having 2MB. I still have lots of older, more "challenged" cards to try (in the very near future.)

Small complaints:

Holding down a key e.g. backspace is a bad idea. The display is slow to show results and insists going on and on long after desired.

Similarly, clicking on the up or down scroll arrows is too slow but yet dragging the middle bit works fast.

Ctrl+Alt+Fx will happily produce the virtual console ttyx within an X session, also Alt+Fx works once in the console but Alt+F7 results in an unrecoverable crash, i.e. you can leave but never return. Perhaps the relative sizes of 64MB real ram, 180MB of swap, and 2MB on the graphics card are to blame here. I haven't tried kdrive on my uptodate laptop yet (512MB of real ram.)

On the box running Icewm the only error message evoked is "hostname: Host name lookup failure" even though "hostname" at the commandline correctly produces "rule-101.gr". This does not prevent anything from working though. That it might confuse a user is the *only* problem.

On the box running KDE there are more error messages (including the one just mentioned) and, again seem harmless but might confuse a user. All of these messages are visible in tty1, the console that "startx" was typed in.
Here is a senario: Type "startx" and wait (surprisingly not toooooo long)
Click on "Close" of KDE tips window (only app running)
Click on red hat
Click on logout and again on logout
Back to tty1 reveals: (the first messages have been scrolled off)
	_Icetransmkdir: Owner of /tmp/.ICE-unix should be set to root
Four repeats of:
	Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Then:
	Can't get own host name. Your system is severely misconfigured
A blank line and then two repeats of:
	Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
then:
	klipper is already running!
Four repeats of:
	Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Then:
	QFont::setPixelSize: Pixel size <= 0 (-1)
	startkde: Shutting down...
	startkde: Done.
	Int 10h (0x4F10) failed: 0x014F (function call failed)
	DPMS failed -1
A blank line and then:
	waiting for X server to shut down
another blank line and the cursor sitting at a prompt.

Here is another senario: Type "startx", KDE loads again,
Going to tty1 (by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1) as soon as possible reveals:
	hostname: Host name lookup failure (the same we got a glimpse of before X got going)
	rm: cannot remove '.' or '..'
	startkde: Starting up...
Two repeats of:
	Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
then:
	Int 10h (0x4F10) failed: 0x014F (function call failed)
	DPMS failed -1
	_KDE_Icetransmkdir: Owner of /tmp/.ICE-unix should be set to root
Four repeats of:
	Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
	Server has no DPMS extension
Four repeats of:
	Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
then:
	mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding
Two repeats of:
	Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
	_Icetransmkdir: Owner of /tmp/.ICE-unix should be set to root
Four repeats of:
	Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Then:
	Can't get own host name. Your system is severely misconfigured
A blank line and then two repeats of:
	Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
then:
	klipper is already running!
Four repeats of:
	Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".

During all this display no key is pushed, many messages are now scrolled off and the cursor dangles on a blank line just below (meaning the X session has fired up KDE and the Ktips window has been displayed.)

Not able to return to tty7 where the X session is displayed, Ctrl+C is pressed (abruptly ending the X session.)

thus these messages are displayed in tty1:
	waiting for X server to shut down ksmserver: Fatal IO error: client killed
	Hangup
	GOT SIGHUP
	startkde: Shutting down...
	*** kdesktop got signal 1 (Exiting)
	KLauncher: Exiting on signal 1
then two blank lines, then:
	xinit: unexpected signal 2.
	[rkwesk at rule-105 rkwesk]$ startkde: Running shutdown scripts...
	startkde: Done.
Finally leaving me on a new line without showing the prompt.
Pressing enter verifies all is well at a new prompt.

This is minor but puzzling.

Richard


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