A few issues, Slackware 13 64bit
 

Hi Guys,

Just a few issues. I've just gotten back into slackware after a few years, and I'm not quite sure how to solve these issues. I have tried searching, but none of what I found seemed to apply to my problems..

My hardware is a core 2 duo laptop, a radeon 3650 video card, 4gb ram and a sata hdd. I am using the default xorg.conf that ships with slackware, from the xorg-skel package.

The only change I have made, is to change the driver from vesa to radeon. both worked fine playing an xvid film with xine, however changing to the radeon driver allowed smooth fullscreen playback.

My issues are that:

1. The X server will crash with MTRR errors. Somewhat randomly, but generally doing somewhat intensive stuff, such as moving a xine window around while a video is playing with firefox in the background.

How would I troubleshoot this?

2. I am unable to switch to virtual terminals outside of X. I used to use ctrl + tab + Fn to get outside of X, and then back with alt + tab + f7. These key combinations do not work, nor does ctrl + alt + backspace. I use fluxbox, and to kill X, I have to kill xinit from an xterm.

How would I enabled these key combos? I am using the default Xorg.config, and DontSwitchVT is still commented out by default.

3. I am frustrated with the slackware version of mplayer. It requires a few libaries I would never use, such as aalib, and I installed them anyway, and now it complains about missing libsmbclient. Do I really need to install samba just to use mplayer?

4. Fonts. I used expert/menu mode to install packages, and left most fonts out by default. Is there a list of the fonts I would need/that are used by most programs? Purely english language based setup. At the moment, I have installed the Xfree86 fonts, adobe fonts and misc-misc fonts. Are the adboe fonts necessary? What other fonts are/are not necessary?

Thanks, I appreciate any assistance with these issues.

Cheers

1) try scrapping your xorg.conf and see if xorg works properly. In older Slackware versions you needed to set this up, but the newer xorg doesn't require this--it worked better for me not using an xorg.conf at all! I just have a minimal one that aticonfig --initial gave me (for the proprietary ATI drivers).
2) in kde, try ctrl-alt-f6. use ctrl-alt-f7 to go back to the desktop environment.
3) My suggestion is download the source for mplayer off their site and run ./configure --help in the directory you extract the source in. This will tell you what option disables the samba dependency. I built mplayer on Slackware 12.2 and it didn't require this--weird. Anyway, find a slackbuild for mplayer, tweak the configure flags, create the package and install it.
4) Not sure about this one, but you probably want to keep whatever fonts you have. I don't know if you're missing any; hopefully the program will degrade gracefully if it doesn't find the font it wants. I usually install the webcorefonts from slackbuilds.org as well.

Hey, thanks for your reply.

1. I actually was running by default without an xorg.conf, as I had not installed the xorg-skel package. It was working quite fine, but was not using the radeon driver by default. It still crashes either way however without the .conf and using vesa, with the .conf and usin vesa, or with the .conf and using radeon.

2. I don't use KDE, nor do I have it installed, however those commands did nothing in fluxbox...

3. Yeah, I think I will end up doing this. I was just surprised the mplayer that comes with slack had so many dependencies. I mean samba, for mplayer?

4. Something only time will tell I guess. I still have to make firefox look decent in fluxbox before I should worry about fonts....

1) I think your card is new enough for the propietary drivers--try them out. I've had good luck with them so far. AFAIK the open source ones are still behind (some cards have 3D support, most don't). Maybe take a look at ~/.xsession-errors as well...
2) Sorry, my assumption. Can't help with fluxbox.
3) I agree. That seems pretty optional to me as well. That's like Debian telling me that X depends on Xine.

2) I use Fluxbox too (startup at runlevel 3) and switch to a virtual console with Ctrl+Alt+Fn with 1<n<7, Alt+F7 to go back to X. As a reminder, tune ~/.fluxbox/keys if you want to change keys' behaviour under X.
4) Why don't you install all fonts shipped with Slackware, even if you don't use all? Don't you have enough disk space ?

It seems we have very different philosophies of running slackware... :)

It is no question of disk space. I don't install unneeded packages, which includes fonts, for the same reason I don't use a generic kernel with hundreds of modules that I don't need. Optimization and efficiency are a part of that reason, but it is also more to do with having fine control over my system. A sense of security and satisfaction of knowing what is on my system, where it is, and why it is being used.

I suppose I could simply install all fonts, but since most of them don't apply to me, being only an English speaker, I would not see the point.

The keys to switch to virtual consoles are not specific to any window manager, fluxbox, KDE, or any other. They are built into the X server, which is why I am stumped that they are not working.

4) On that topic, you are on your own. All I can say is I never miss a font.

About optimization and efficiency: if you mean optimize for speed, I don't believe that removing a never_loaded_module can speed up your system. Now if you mean optimize for space, that's another story.

IMHO having fine control of a Slackware system depend al lot more of what applications you use and how it is configured, mainly in editing files in /etc, that of what is installed.

Nevertheless I understand that you see things differently and I respect that.

2) Here Ctrl+alt+backspace do not work either (dunno why) but I saw in ~/.fluxbox/keys that Ctrl+Alt+Del exit Fluxbox (and kill X) so that's how I do it.

Here keys to switch to virtual consoles do work, though not with Ctrl + Tab + Fn but with Ctrl + Alt + Fn as with any other Linux system AFAIK, so I don't see your point.

I have a radeon hd3100 and I'm using the radeon driver. You can use a very minimal xorg.conf, here's mine: I will say that I had to update libdrm though. Before updating, the performance was horrible. Slow redraws on everything. Here's the link. And thanks to alexiy for that link too.

Speed comes into it, in that programs will not have to trawl through hundreds of never used fonts to look for the one they need. I will grant you that on a modern system, it is not so much an issue.

It does not matter though. Not installing excess you don't need is simply good practice. How is having a hundred fonts in different languages you are never going to use optimal or efficient?

Isn't that statement a bit contradictory? Just because some applications happen to come with slackware shouldn't matter. It is no different from downloading and choosing to install them.

Likewise..., it is always good to get new opinions :)

My point is that it is basic functionality built into the X server and common across all platforms, so I don't understand why it is not working.

Fluxbox can be configured to be killed, and since you started it with xinit, it will also kill X, but ctrl + alt + backspace should kill X independent of any WM.

These were the fonts that you needed to get X to start in 12.2, they might be the same in 13.0, but then again they might not. You may have to install in a different order e.g. font-misc-misc will not install properly unless encodings, mkfontdir and mkfontscale are installed before it.

Hope this helps.

samac

I have a similar problem, but with Slackware 13 32-bit...

It used to work, but now they won't... I'm using KDE... But after reinstalling Slackware, they stopped working. I can use F1 and see system messages, but tty6 is the only console that works. F6 is the only one I can press to get any kind of prompt. 2~5 just give a blinking cursor (actually, they just don't change at all) after going to one of them...

Any ideas?

That is normal for runlevel 4, ahwm. Have a look in /etc/inittab. You'll soon spot the difference between tty1-5 and tty6.

To be honest, I don't know why Pat even bothers to disable them. It's not as if it saves all that much in system resources and it's one of those things that seems to catch people out.

The thing is, it worked before...

This is from /etc/inittab

That's the default file, if I'm not mistaken. And it looks to me that this should go ahead and work. Am I wrong?

Your quote of /etc/inittab proves the point GazL was making. Check which tty's are configured to have agetty running in runlevel 4. Only that last line, so only tty6.

Adam

In Slackware, tty6 is used for the startup of X. That's the default file and they normally work with default settings.

It actually doesn't prove much of anything, in other words. runlevel 4 is for X and 3 is for the basic console. So they can all run the basic console. And even still, to get to X, you use ctrl+alt+F7 -- NOT F6.

That probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense...

To make it easy, here's the whole file:

Note: It performed the exact same (all 6 consoles PLUS the X system) before AND after setting the default runlevel to 4. That is, until I reinstalled a week or so ago. One time (AFTER setting default runlevel to 4) I commented out c4, c5 and c6 and changed c3 to read 12345 and I was STILL able to switch to VTs 1, 2, and 3 -- with X STILL on F7.

Since I started with Slackware it has always been 6 VTs in runlevel 3, only one in runlevel 4 (console 6). That is the expected behaviour. The X server always runs on 7 and above and no one has suggested differently. Only consoles with a '4' in their definition line will start in runlevel 4. Your posted file (the default) only has '4' in c6, and hence you can access console 6 normally -- but none of the other consoles are available. X is still on 7 whether in runlevel 3 or 4. If you achieved the behaviour in your last post on a previous Slackware version, it was either configured strangely (ie not the default) or you somehow corrupted your installation (or it was buggy but I very much doubt that). What you are seeing matches the expected behaviour *exactly*. To get all consoles available in runlevel 4 just add 4 to the list of options for c1-c5.

Seems to be what you're looking for. You can try to convince us that you're correct...but you aren't, and that inittab matches up exactly with what should be happening.

100% correct ++

As for the ctrl+alt+backspace...

The default behaviour for X has been changed (stupidly IMHO but don't get me started) so that Ctrl+Alt+Bkspce no longer kills X. We restore this action to it's correct behaviour using HAL.
Look in
for the line So if in your "Quest for purity" you decided to disable HAL then that is likely the reason your "Terminate" fails in X.

So basically, you're saying that I would have to add "4" to all of them in order to get them all available since I have X run automatically at boot-up to handle login.. Is that right?

Where as, if I reset it to have it stop at the command line (login and then run startx) they would all immediately become available in its current configuration.

Am I understanding that correctly? (I'm still relatively new, so I wanna make sure)

That is correct

Ah okay, thanks for clearing that up. :D