[indiana-discuss] [xwin-discuss] Xorg transition from XSun on SPARC

Mon Mar 30 07:00:59 PDT 2009

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 2:19 PM, Frank Middleton
<f.middleton at apogeect.com> wrote:
> On 03/27/09 18:43, Martin Bochnig wrote:
>>
>> Hello, why exactly do you want to migrate to Xorg?
>
> It is my understanding that Xsun contains encumbered components that
> cannot be released to Open Solaris, and also that Sun will eventually
> EOL XSun. So the migration to Xorg seems inevitable, just a question
> of when.

Ok, agreed.
In June OpenSolaris 2009.06 gets released. For the first time also for
SPARC, as commercially Sun-supported version.
A preliminary snapshot can already be fetched from genunix.org. Right
now there is no Sun-supported SPARC LiveCD, instead AI (Automated
Installer). Right now you were limited to MartUX (with Xorg, URL at
bottom of msg.) or MilaX (text-mode) LiveCD/DVD's. But a Sun supported
OpenSolaris SPARC LiveCD will soon be available, too. I finally work
on my dream-task to add such a thing to sliminstall. A few more days
pls  ...

>> What is your hardware?
>
> Mostly sun4u sparc with ffbs and afbs.

Then I have good news for you: Those are among the working frame
buffers already. Even in the new xserver 1.5.3. A few days ago I
merged in the diffs into the fox-gate:
http://src.opensolaris.org/source/history/fox/fox-gate/

> We do Unix software development
> on a consulting basis and simply like using SPARC hardware and Solaris,
> and evangelize Solaris whenever we can. Used Sun SPARC hardware is often
> an incredible bargain...

Indeed.
Only problem is power consumption of very old hardware.
But if you can get money for your work, then it is definitely worth it.
With CoolThreads based modern SPARC gear it is of course the other way
around    :))

>> What does it have to do with the x86 LiveCD (and "limited success with
>> it")? The SPARC-LiveCD was meant, obviously.
>
> Apologies; it has nothing to do with it. There doesn't seem to be an
> X86 Live CD discussion group and I was wondering if someone here
> would know which would be the best place to ask about the problems,
> mostly X related, probably due to security or missing services.

Oh, there are more than enough discussion lists, actually.
What you describe seems to match the indiana-discuss list most.
But there is also livemedia-discuss and now caiman-discuss (for LiveCD
developers, not so much suited for X11 related user questions).

Here you find a central access point:

http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo

(If you just want to post ad-hoc to one or another list without having
to subscribe, access those lists via Jive instead:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/discussions/ .)

> We have spare machines to do SPARC testing on, so we really don't
> need to mess with the Live CDs - it's easier to jumpstart from DVD
> images. The X86 experiment was just to see if we could replace Fedora
> with Solaris on a couple of old X86 boxes we use as X terminals.
> Apparently not (at least when using the Live X86 CD) since X doesn't
> seem to be able to bind to its from address.

What??
Of course you can.
Maybe you cought a bug. Normally it should work. Also: You don't need
to work with setting $DISPLAY manually anymore, and with xhost + and
friends. Did you try "ssh -X host" ??

>> SPARC-Xorg is an unsupported Luxus-service on SPARC, provided by the
>> FOX project's community.
>> For a variety of different reasons (not Sun's fault) not all hardware
>> can ever be supported.
>> And currently - with server 1.5.3 - the support is even more limited.
>
> I read that the Sun ffb and afb devices are already supported.

Yes. Work like a charm. Also in the new xserver version which will
ship with 2009.06, namely 1.5.3. ONLY BAD NEWS: MANAGEMENT HAS NO
PLANS TO MERGE IN fox-gate. Without the fox-gate's special SPARC
enhancements, the server shipping as PART OF 2009.06 WILL NOT EVEN
DETECT UPA CARDS. SOS, HELP, *PLEASE*:  I hope MANAGEMENT CHANGE THEIR
MIND. Otherwise afb- and ffb- support can only be provided, if I set
up an IPS repo somewhere on one of my private sites. So please nail
Sun with questions like this, this saves you and others like you and
even Sun much trouble, then.

> On X86, proprietary fbs (like ATI) seem to be supported by generic drivers
> that I suppose were reverse engineered from the hardware. For SPARC, I
> guess this won't happen because there are far too few of them. But AFAIK
> this shouldn't be an issue for Sun fbs.

This is a long story.
The short version is here (talking about server 1.2) :
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/fox/SPARC-Xorg/

>> If we - including myself - can help you (for free), then that's fine.
>
> Thanks. I was hoping to help in any way I could with testing, given the
> apparent inevitability of the transition. But I don't want to test with
> releases we know won't work, hence the question.

afb and ffb will work very reliably, also in Xinerama mode.
If you daubt this, try the MartUX LiveCD with xserver 1.2:
http://www.martux.org/SPARC_distro_incl_Xorg7.2/

Separate (slightly older) SPARC Xorg server 1.2 binaries are here:
http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~mbeinsx/FOX/bin-snapshots/

>> But please understand that the entire thing is totally unsupported
>> right now, on experimental basis. So please don't be disappointed in
>> case your hardware is not compatible - depending on the type of your
>> hardware this can mean "at this time" or in some cases
>> (XVR-500/600/1200, maybe also XVR-1000) it most likely means "never
>> ever".
>>
>> In such a case either be patient (A) or forget migrating away from the
>> stable and supported well-functioning Xsun (B)
>
> If the answer is - be patient, that's fine. The answer to my first question
> would then be, yes, it is premature. Since Sun doesn't seem to be making
> SPARC workstations any more, it seems unlikely that Xorg for SPARC will
> ever be supported by Sun, and if they EOL XSun and there is no Xorg for
> SPARC, then it seems like all remaining SPARC workstations will have to
> switch to BSD :-( or become headless servers.

Well, not quite.
Only for virtually  a l l  models which are not in production anymore.
That's their goal and plan.
But with above packages cou can get around this limitation on the
working configurations, unsupported, for free.

>>
>> What other questions do you have?
>
> If it is premature then I don't have any,

Because you have afb/ffb, it is not all that pre-mature.

> although I would be curious to
> get an answer about xorg.conf since it (presumably) affects X86 and, I
> guess, eventually, SPARC as well. If it isn't premature, or you would
> like some additional testers, then the other questions are relevant:
>
> . Can we use svccfg to switch between Xorg and Xsun and back?

Yes, flawlessly:

See http://www.martux.org/xorg/FOX1.0/SPARC/INSTALL under "n.)"  .

> . How to switch the mode (clone/xinerama) of a 2nd fb w/o editing xorg.conf?
> . How to manually switch the resolutionof a 2nd fb w/o editing xorg.conf?

Without editing xorg.conf requires the X Resize and Rotate Extension -
RandR to be (properly) supported by the frame buffer - device's ddx
module, which is not the case  for sunffb, unfortunately, so it won't
be possible.

To configure Xinerama you must edit xorg.conf and restart the server
(simply log out to gdm or dtlogin and log-in again). In an earlier
message I described how you would do this on SPARC for afb/ffb:
http://markmail.org/message/v7zdp7psd6pi5ash

This one contains a sample xorg.conf:
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/indiana-discuss/2008-September/011831.html
  .

> . How current do we need to be on snv to make testing worthwhile?

To test above binary packages anything higher than snv_60. It is only
about linker dependencies (version of libc) and one new symbol in
libnsl. On older setups you can still test, if you nfs-mount a newer
snv's /lib and use a few dirty tricks (either mount over /lib and
/usr/lib completely, or just set LD_LIBRARY_PATH and run the test
commands with ld.so.1, such things.

Note that snv shifted from old xserver 1.2 to modern 1.5.3 in snv_107.
But this doesn't matter, if you temporarily replace (e.g. through
symlink or nfs mount or lofs mount) /usr/X11.

>> p.s. Forget my remark about SPARC-Nevada's Xorg. Those who know what
>> it stands for were addressed. Nobody else.
>
> Well, it /is/ a public forum :-)

You know, when I want to do it in a very humble manner, then I post
things like that as commit log message to fox-notify. Then I get the
complaint, that nobody sees it.
If I write to xwin, it is too public?? As nobody (with enough
authority / management) contacts me privately, what else shall I do?

> With Sun apparently no longer selling SPARC workstations, the entire
> user community will be people on small budgets who like SPARC and have
> probably bought used machines because they are incredible value for money,
> or don't want to replace the ones they have because it would cost a
> fortune.
>
> But they will be worthless if future versions of Solaris have no fb
> support. I'd like to contribute any way I can to forestall this. So
> would everyone else, I would think, as they slowly become aware of this.
>
> Cheers -- Frank

PLEASE, TELL THIS THE MANAGEMENT      :))

I forward to indiana-discuss, because it looks like the more
appropriate forum for you x86 LiveCD related questions.
And also SPARC is relevant to indiana-discuss now, with 2009.06 on the horizon.

SPARC'y (and x86/x64 influenced) regards,
proud OpenSolaris.org community member and Sun-fan,
CA 0335,
%martin bochnig