OpenBSD Journal

Developer blog: todd: Xenocara now in -current!

Contributed by deanna on from the readme dept.

As of a few days ago, on all architectures, Xenocara (using X.org 7.2) is now being used to create -current snapshots! Some mirrors and slower architectures may not yet have the newer snapshots. The magic date to look for is March 26th, 2007 or newer. The transition is going to affect -current ports users, so here are a few tips for making the switch.

This officially switches OpenBSD from building X from the XF4/ module of cvs to the xenocara/ module of cvs. Many thanks to the efforts of Matthieu Herrb for bringing this to fruition.

So that users may know what to expect, a few FAQ's and caveats follow.

Updating via normal update procedures works just fine. This is because the userland libraries are cranked to not conflict with the older libraries used by the (now old) XF4 tree.

Old packages will work with old libs, aka normal update will not require immediate update of any ports. A fresh snapshot install will require new packages to go with the newer libs.

This is the same as a libc crank, ports must be built afterwards to use the newer libs.

One can build ports themselves, or update via `pkg_add -u', which should handle the lib issues (i.e. notifying people if libs are not there that are needed).

Any ports that utilize any libraries under /usr/X11R6/lib that can't be distributed will have to be rebuilt from source with 'make update'.

If you do decide you wish to build xenocara yourself, be sure to read the updated release(8) page as well as xenocara/README.

Beware if you have src on nfs, time synchronization between the server and client is required to be within one second.

If you do run across any surprises, be sure to report them via sendbug(1) or to x11 at openbsd dot org ..

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Brynet (Brynet) on

    Does this mean Xenocara will be in the 4.1 release? or is that still on hold for 4.2?

    Thanks..

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (87.194.34.157) on

      > Does this mean Xenocara will be in the 4.1 release? or is that still on hold for 4.2?
      >
      > Thanks..

      4.2

    2. By Matthew Dempsky (15.227.137.69) on

      > Does this mean Xenocara will be in the 4.1 release?

      My understanding is 4.1 has already been tagged for release. Changes now are going towards 4.2.

  2. By Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse (jasper) jasper@openbsd.org on http://humppa.nl

    i'm wondering if anyone has succesfully tried Xenocara on machines with an intel 945GM card..such as the thinkpad x60s.. 
    (WW) I810: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0:2:1) found
    the funny thing is, as root i'm able to start X, but not as a normal user. so if anyone has managed to get X working with this card/machine...

    Comments

    1. By Deanna Phillips (deanna) on

      > (WW) I810: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0:2:1) found

      I'm not sure that's your problem, since I get the same message and Xenocara works fine.

      vga1 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 "Intel 82945GM Video" rev 0x03: aperture at 0xd0100000, size 0x10000000

      But, this is on a VAIO.

      Comments

      1. By Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse (jasper) on http://humppa.nl

        > > (WW) I810: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0:2:1) found
        >
        > I'm not sure that's your problem, since I get the same message and Xenocara works fine.

        Sorry, but I do know what my problem is. A local fuckup it seemed.. but it's working now ;)

        Comments

        1. By Marc Espie (163.5.254.20) espie@openbsd.org on

          > > > (WW) I810: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0:2:1) found
          > >
          > > I'm not sure that's your problem, since I get the same message and Xenocara works fine.
          >
          > Sorry, but I do know what my problem is. A local fuckup it seemed.. but it's working now ;)
          >

          Not a local fuck-up actually. Matthieu committed some experimental
          xenocara work by mistake. Got affected as well (new laptop was
          starting X fine with old X, no longer with xenocara, couldn't be
          a configuration issue, since it had NO configuration).

          Anyways, it's possible to work around it (creating an x config and
          using it)...

  3. By Brynet (Brynet) on

    With all this work progressing on Xenocara, Does this mean things like DRI might be possible in the near future?

    Thanks..

    Comments

    1. By Brad (brad) on

      > With all this work progressing on Xenocara, Does this mean things like DRI might be possible in the near future?
      >
      > Thanks..

      There was nothing stopping anyone from adding support for DRI even with X.Org 6.9. Having X.Org 7.2 does not change anything in this regard.

      Comments

      1. By Brynet (Brynet) on

        > > With all this work progressing on Xenocara, Does this mean things like DRI might be possible in the near future?
        > >
        > > Thanks..
        >
        > There was nothing stopping anyone from adding support for DRI even with X.Org 6.9. Having X.Org 7.2 does not change anything in this regard.

        I meant considering there is a lot of attention being paid to X now.. does this mean someone will finally work on DRI? I have a few p2@400mhz workstations with embedded MGA g200 chipsets.. Without any acceleration OpenGL is just not possible..

        Is there any "strait" answers to why DRI is not supported? security reasons? lack of time? Most developers are all using systems capable of decent Software 3D Rendering and don't care about the people with "lesser" boxes?

        When someone asks about DRI on OpenBSD it's like Taboo or something....

        Thanks.... sorry for sounding rude.. It's not intentional.. just frustration..

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (75.214.80.33) on

          > > > With all this work progressing on Xenocara, Does this mean things like DRI might be possible in the near future?
          > > >
          > > > Thanks..
          > >
          > > There was nothing stopping anyone from adding support for DRI even with X.Org 6.9. Having X.Org 7.2 does not change anything in this regard.
          >
          > I meant considering there is a lot of attention being paid to X now.. does this mean someone will finally work on DRI? I have a few p2@400mhz workstations with embedded MGA g200 chipsets.. Without any acceleration OpenGL is just not possible..
          >
          > Is there any "strait" answers to why DRI is not supported? security reasons? lack of time? Most developers are all using systems capable of decent Software 3D Rendering and don't care about the people with "lesser" boxes?
          >
          > When someone asks about DRI on OpenBSD it's like Taboo or something....
          >
          > Thanks.... sorry for sounding rude.. It's not intentional.. just frustration..

          you could always pay one of more openbsd developers to develop dri support and hope it gets added. also, ATi and nVidia will probably never be supported seeing as they are binary only.

          Comments

          1. By Brynet (Brynet) on

            > you could always pay one of more openbsd developers to develop dri support and hope it gets added. also, ATi and nVidia will probably never be supported seeing as they are binary only.
            >

            http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Status

            A few older ATI chipsets supported by DRI, nVidia has never been supported DRI though..

            There are a few other projects for nVidia though:
            http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/

            nouveau has been getting a lot of attention lately.. if only the OpenBSD would benefit from some of this and start offering something for people who want to use OpenBSD on the desktop..

            Comments

            1. By Anonymous Coward (75.214.231.231) on

              > nouveau has been getting a lot of attention lately.. if only the OpenBSD would benefit from some of this and start offering something for people who want to use OpenBSD on the desktop..

              Why, yes, because we all know OpenBSD is completely unusable on the desktop currently. Noone uses those x11/ ports anyway. Makes me wonder why they bothered porting openoffice since noone could ever use it.

              Comments

              1. By Renaud Allard (renaud) on

                > > nouveau has been getting a lot of attention lately.. if only the OpenBSD would benefit from some of this and start offering something for people who want to use OpenBSD on the desktop..
                >
                > Why, yes, because we all know OpenBSD is completely unusable on the desktop currently. Noone uses those x11/ ports anyway. Makes me wonder why they bothered porting openoffice since noone could ever use it.

                Now I understand why some people are calling me weird as I am using OpenBSD as a desktop, even on my laptop. :)

              2. By Anonymous Coward (85.101.40.71) on

                > > nouveau has been getting a lot of attention lately.. if only the OpenBSD would benefit from some of this and start offering something for people who want to use OpenBSD on the desktop..
                >
                > Why, yes, because we all know OpenBSD is completely unusable on the desktop currently. Noone uses those x11/ ports anyway. Makes me wonder why they bothered porting openoffice since noone could ever use it.

                I'm using those ports. Thanks to all developers! And by the way AFAIK openoffice does not require hardware acceleration.

              3. By Anonymous Coward (75.214.42.82) on

                > > nouveau has been getting a lot of attention lately.. if only the OpenBSD would benefit from some of this and start offering something for people who want to use OpenBSD on the desktop..
                >
                > Why, yes, because we all know OpenBSD is completely unusable on the desktop currently. Noone uses those x11/ ports anyway. Makes me wonder why they bothered porting openoffice since noone could ever use it.

                sarcasm.

              4. By ryan (70.67.143.16) on

                > > nouveau has been getting a lot of attention lately.. if only the OpenBSD would benefit from some of this and start offering something for people who want to use OpenBSD on the desktop..
                >
                > Why, yes, because we all know OpenBSD is completely unusable on the desktop currently. Noone uses those x11/ ports anyway. Makes me wonder why they bothered porting openoffice since noone could ever use it.

                i dislike how people always have to phrase it 'if only openbsd would <insert request here>' how about people spend less time doing 'if only's' and spend more time with 'i've ported this' or 'i've patched that'. just because one feature that you feel is what makes a 'desktop os' doesn't mean that it applies to everyone. openbsd is not made to cater to you, it is made for the people that spend the time doing it.

                i for one have been using openbsd since 2.7, not that long i know, but over the years i've seen such great growth,and openbsd has always been stable and for what its worth, almost flawless, especially when comparing to other projects.

                I use openbsd on my laptop, currently an ibm t23 (also used on a thinkpad 600, 600x, and hp 5040us, which i actually gave to my wife to use the t23). while i as much as anyone would love to see dri in some form, probably as a patch set as that sort of thing would be best left out of the generic kernel, i will NOT be posting to the mailinglists with whiney 'please cater to me' comments. i will however, be more than happy that when one or more brave souls step up and attempt the feat, to help them with testing, as it is all I can offer (not being a programmer, yet)

                people, please stop with the feature x please comments, go elsewhere instead of a project that has made it abundantly clear that this is not acceptable chatter or open your wallets to fund that request. thanks,

                -ryan

                Comments

                1. By Brynet (Brynet) on

                  > > > nouveau has been getting a lot of attention lately.. if only the OpenBSD would benefit from some of this and start offering something for people who want to use OpenBSD on the desktop..
                  > >
                  > > Why, yes, because we all know OpenBSD is completely unusable on the desktop currently. Noone uses those x11/ ports anyway. Makes me wonder why they bothered porting openoffice since noone could ever use it.
                  >
                  > i dislike how people always have to phrase it 'if only openbsd would <insert request here>' how about people spend less time doing 'if only's' and spend more time with 'i've ported this' or 'i've patched that'. just because one feature that you feel is what makes a 'desktop os' doesn't mean that it applies to everyone. openbsd is not made to cater to you, it is made for the people that spend the time doing it.
                  >
                  > i for one have been using openbsd since 2.7, not that long i know, but over the years i've seen such great growth,and openbsd has always been stable and for what its worth, almost flawless, especially when comparing to other projects.
                  >
                  > I use openbsd on my laptop, currently an ibm t23 (also used on a thinkpad 600, 600x, and hp 5040us, which i actually gave to my wife to use the t23). while i as much as anyone would love to see dri in some form, probably as a patch set as that sort of thing would be best left out of the generic kernel, i will NOT be posting to the mailinglists with whiney 'please cater to me' comments. i will however, be more than happy that when one or more brave souls step up and attempt the feat, to help them with testing, as it is all I can offer (not being a programmer, yet)
                  >
                  > people, please stop with the feature x please comments, go elsewhere instead of a project that has made it abundantly clear that this is not acceptable chatter or open your wallets to fund that request. thanks,
                  >
                  > -ryan

                  There are people who are not exactly skilled enough to port such a thing.. or provide patches.. like you yourself just said you were not a programmer.

                  I myself use OpenBSD on my workstations.. I have nothing but respect for it.. where is the harm in dreaming? I thought it might be an opportunity to ask, with more attention being focused on the new port and all..

            2. By phessler (209.204.157.97) on

              >if only the OpenBSD would benefit from some of this and start offering
              >something for people who want to use OpenBSD on the desktop..

              dri is not required for desktop use, far from it. its mostly used in games and some high-end video work.

              as far as I can tell, the people with the skills to work on dri either don't have the interest and/or don't have the time to work on it.

              Comments

              1. By Jeff Quast (dingo) on

                > dri is not required for desktop use, far from it. its mostly used in games and some high-end video work.

                I am considering transitioning to DRI displays and video cards and I do not do high-end video work, and the only game I occasionaly play is nethack, and not because I like blowing money.

                I have been plagued with headaches from eye strain. Like most of you I work in front of displays throughout the day, and on weekends and evenings hack on displays at home.

                I am -told- that the clarity of the text is much better with DRI and considering I spend all of my time hacking, I am hoping this may relieve some strain from my eyes.

                If this is not the case please let me know, because I am about to fork out hundreds of dollars.

                Comments

                1. By henning (80.86.183.227) on

                  > I am -told- that the clarity of the text is much better with DRI and considering I spend all of my time hacking, I am hoping this may relieve some strain from my eyes.

                  that must be complete nonsense. what shoud DRI have to do with text clarity??
                  DVI instead of analog connections can help - did someone mix up acronyms??

                  Comments

                  1. By Brynet (Brynet) on

                    > > I am -told- that the clarity of the text is much better with DRI and considering I spend all of my time hacking, I am hoping this may relieve some strain from my eyes.
                    >
                    > that must be complete nonsense. what shoud DRI have to do with text clarity??
                    > DVI instead of analog connections can help - did someone mix up acronyms??
                    >

                    Looks like he got confused or something lol..

                    http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/

                2. By Anonymous Coward (209.204.157.97) on

                  > > dri is not required for desktop use, far from it. its mostly used in games and some high-end video work.
                  >
                  > I am considering transitioning to DRI displays and video cards and I do not do high-end video work, and the only game I occasionaly play is nethack, and not because I like blowing money.
                  >
                  > I have been plagued with headaches from eye strain. Like most of you I work in front of displays throughout the day, and on weekends and evenings hack on displays at home.
                  >
                  > I am -told- that the clarity of the text is much better with DRI and considering I spend all of my time hacking, I am hoping this may relieve some strain from my eyes.
                  >
                  > If this is not the case please let me know, because I am about to fork out hundreds of dollars.

                  You are a bit confused. DRI has to do with how the OS accesses the video card. DVI is the newfangled connector you are talking about. DVI works just fine in OpenBSD.

                3. By Joachim Schipper (Joachim) on

                  > I have been plagued with headaches from eye strain. Like most of you I work in front of displays throughout the day, and on weekends and evenings hack on displays at home.
                  >
                  > I am -told- that the clarity of the text is much better with DRI and considering I spend all of my time hacking, I am hoping this may relieve some strain from my eyes.

                  Aside from the DVI/DRI issue already pointed out, and keeping in mind that I don't know what I am talking about, I've personally found that using white-on-black is a lot easier on the eyes than the other way around. In terminals, in particular, changing this is very easy and the result is closer to the 'historical' result anyway.

                  Joachim

                  Comments

                  1. By sthen (85.158.44.149) on

                    > I've personally found that using white-on-black is a lot easier on the eyes than the other way around.

                    Now I've got usbtablet working again (my primary pointer device is a little Graphire, I don't get on with mice or trackballs any more), I'm trying to find a combination of resources/.muttrc settings for 7.2 that give grey-on-black both at the shell and in Mutt, and don't lose the frame to xterm's scrollbar... I have only managed to get any 2 out of the 3 so far.

                    I definitely give my vote to DVI, for static text and scrolling by a whole page there's not a lot in it between DVI and a _decent_ analogue card and cable, but I find the analogue->digital conversion in any TFT I've used results in quite annoying blurring during line-by-line scrolling.

        2. By Anonymous Coward (76.80.164.33) on

          > > > With all this work progressing on Xenocara, Does this mean things like DRI might be possible in the near future?
          > > >
          > > > Thanks..
          > >
          > > There was nothing stopping anyone from adding support for DRI even with X.Org 6.9. Having X.Org 7.2 does not change anything in this regard.
          >
          > I meant considering there is a lot of attention being paid to X now.. does this mean someone will finally work on DRI? I have a few p2@400mhz workstations with embedded MGA g200 chipsets.. Without any acceleration OpenGL is just not possible..
          >
          > Is there any "strait" answers to why DRI is not supported? security reasons? lack of time? Most developers are all using systems capable of decent Software 3D Rendering and don't care about the people with "lesser" boxes?
          >

          From what I understand, OpenBSD limits access to only like the first megabyte of memory on the AGP card, so nothing else can really be done. I'm not sure where I heard this and I couldn't find any reference online. So I'm not really sure.

          Comments

          1. By Joachim Schipper (Joachim) on

            > From what I understand, OpenBSD limits access to only like the first megabyte of memory on the AGP card, so nothing else can really be done. I'm not sure where I heard this and I couldn't find any reference online. So I'm not really sure.

            This seems to be correct: see xf86(4).

            Joachim

        3. By Marc Espie (163.5.254.20) espie@openbsd.org on

          > When someone asks about DRI on OpenBSD it's like Taboo or something....

          No, people just don't have enough time to answer, since the answer is complicated.

          DRI interests some people. It takes work. It's probably possible to do something quick-and-dirty that will work on some architectures, on some cards, break a lot of other setups, and will have large security risks.

          So, there are experiments out there. I'm pretty sure tedu had managed to get some dri working at some point on one of his machines.

          It's just real tough to do right, there are pieces of puzzle in X, in the kernel, and there are security implications.

          As usual, stuff like X plays it fast and loose where security is concerned. In fact, the hardware model itself is somewhat broken, as the business model for gfx card vendors is based on performance, not security.

          There are changes in X that will be somewhat easier to do while tracking newer xorg. There might be some dri. Or there might increased security.

          It's quite likely you can't have both. If you want more secure gfx renderings, you will have to be ready to abandon more acceleration.

          One thing knowledgeable people can do is to understand the issues, and try to convince the freedesktop people to start designing cleaner APIs to use the gfx cards... because currently, it's basically: okay, you have a gfx card, give it the keys to the whole system. here, go play, try not to poop in memory that does not belong to you. Kind of sad actually, especially, since most gfx cars are not diaper-trained.

    2. By Jeff Quast (dingo) on

      > With all this work progressing on Xenocara, Does this mean things like DRI might be possible in the near future?
      >
      > Thanks..

      It works now.

      X.Org's wiki lists which ATI chipsets support DRI:

      http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/ATIRadeon#head-298bd23baafb9c2fad1774d1d2fa54bd2aa55e7d

      http://www.xfree86.org/current/radeon.4.html

      This leads me to a $23 DRI solution:
      http://www.hypermicro.com/product.asp?pf_id=VDVT100

      Comments

      1. By Brynet (Brynet) on

        > > With all this work progressing on Xenocara, Does this mean things like DRI might be possible in the near future?
        > >
        > > Thanks..
        >
        > It works now.
        >
        > X.Org's wiki lists which ATI chipsets support DRI:
        >
        > http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/ATIRadeon#head-298bd23baafb9c2fad1774d1d2fa54bd2aa55e7d
        >
        > http://www.xfree86.org/current/radeon.4.html
        >
        > This leads me to a $23 DRI solution:
        > http://www.hypermicro.com/product.asp?pf_id=VDVT100

        ...It works now?

        I was talking about DRI.. on ~OpenBSD~.. not X in general..

        Thanks everyone for answering at least, guess 2D will suffice in the 21st century.. right?

        Comments

        1. By Janne Johansson (82.182.176.20) jj@inet6.se on

          > > > With all this work progressing on Xenocara, Does this mean things like DRI might be possible in the near future?

          > Thanks everyone for answering at least, guess 2D will suffice in the 21st century.. right?

          As long as your dont surf in 3D, read three dimensional emails, write text/code in three dimensional characters and need to verify three dimensional ssh-keys from all angles, you probably can go on doing lots of the common tasks even in the 21st century too. If 3D games is all you do, OpenBSD was never for you anyhow so it wouldn't be a big loss for you to play on other OSes.

          Comments

          1. By Matthieu Herrb (213.41.176.184) on

            > > > > With all this work progressing on Xenocara, Does this mean things like DRI might be possible in the near future?
            >
            > > Thanks everyone for answering at least, guess 2D will suffice in the 21st century.. right?
            >
            > As long as your dont surf in 3D, read three dimensional emails, write text/code in three dimensional characters and need to verify three dimensional ssh-keys from all angles, you probably can go on doing lots of the common tasks even in the 21st century too. If 3D games is all you do, OpenBSD was never for you anyhow so it wouldn't be a big loss for you to play on other OSes.

            Beware, future video cards from ATI and nVidia won't have a 2D acceleration engine anymore. Thus the only way to get reasonable 2D speed will be by using the 3D engine and this requires DRI.

            But for now there's no freely available documentation for those cards and no opensource dri drivers for them either.

            Comments

            1. By Janne Johansson (82.182.176.20) jj@inet6.se on


              > > > Thanks everyone for answering at least, guess 2D will suffice in the 21st century.. right?
              > >
              > > As long as your dont surf in 3D, read three dimensional emails, write text/code in three dimensional characters and need to verify three dimensional ssh-keys from all angles, you probably can go on doing lots of the common tasks even in the 21st century too.
              >
              > Beware, future video cards from ATI and nVidia won't have a 2D acceleration engine anymore. Thus the only way to get reasonable 2D speed will be by using the 3D engine and this requires DRI.
              >
              > But for now there's no freely available documentation for those cards and no opensource dri drivers for them either.

              Oh, I'm sure it can get worse, but if it would happen to be just-as-bad or just-as-good as today, then I'm quite fine with it.

          2. By Anonymous Coward (82.40.182.26) on

            > > > > With all this work progressing on Xenocara, Does this mean things like DRI might be possible in the near future?
            >
            > > Thanks everyone for answering at least, guess 2D will suffice in the 21st century.. right?
            >
            > As long as your dont surf in 3D, read three dimensional emails, write text/code in three dimensional characters and need to verify three dimensional ssh-keys from all angles, you probably can go on doing lots of the common tasks even in the 21st century too. If 3D games is all you do, OpenBSD was never for you anyhow so it wouldn't be a big loss for you to play on other OSes.
            >

            Surf in 3D? Perhaps you hadn't heard that Mozilla's Gecko rendering system is moving inexorably toward using 3D-based Cairo. Anti-aliasing and transparency become more important as people expect prettier interfaces, 3D hardware is good at these tasks.

    3. By Anonymous Coward (217.209.226.124) on

      > With all this work progressing on Xenocara, Does this mean things like DRI might be possible in the near future?
      >
      > Thanks..

      Of course, now that it has been imported in netbsd... I mean this is what happened when the sommerfeld_i386mp_1 branch went public...

  4. By Mike Swanson (71.197.194.170) on

    Is this going to keep the same X11 license as always?

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