Ximtool CDE

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Apr 25, 2000

	I was hoping somebody else would respond (or still might) since
I'm not too fluent with CDE.  Anyway...

> Hi Craig - I 'inherited' this machine about 6 months after it came
> out of the box; I have not reason to suspect that the person who 
> originally set it up changed any of the factory defaults, but 
> apparently something like that was done.  How can I check this, i.e. 
> where would such a change be made?  Thanks,

	I believe the Creator3D card will work in either 24 or 8-bit 
mode automatically and supports simultaneous multiple-depth visuals.
The default visual depends on how the server is started but you can
always use the 'xdpyinfo' command to find out what the default visual 
is.  
	For newer cards such as the PGX card on Ultra 5 systems they
claim to support both depths but it needs to be reset at the hardware
level by issuing the command

	# /usr/sbin/m64config -depth 8

as root.  Use "m64config -prompt" to show the current settings.
	One tip which works well is the set the card to use an 8-bit
visual as a default but start applications like Netscape with a
"-visual TrueColor" flag to run in the 24-bit mode and avoid colormap
conflicts with ximtool.  SAOtng can make use of an 8-bit visual if one
is available even if it's not the default and it's DS9 successor can
work in 24-bit mode (currently as a standalone display program but I
think the IIS protocol is also now working so it can be used as an IRAF
display server).

> I've had an .xserverrc setup for some time.  I can go to the console
> login and start openwin manually and I can run ximtool fine.  What 
> I'd like to be able to do is start from the CDE login screen (the xserver
> is already running) and run ximtool from my normal cde session.  I
> tried the modification of the /usr/dt/config/Xservers, i.e. the original 
> file looked like:
> 
>   :0   Local local_uid@console root /usr/openwin/bin/Xsun :0 -nobanner 
> -dev /dev/ffb0 defdepth 24
> 
> which I changed to 
> 
>   :0   Local local_uid@console root /usr/openwin/bin/Xsun :0 -nobanner 
> -dev /dev/ffb0 defdepth 8 defClass PseudoColor
> 
> However, when I do this I get an error: 'Cannot open console :0' - I'm 
> > not sure if this is the exact error message - I didn't log it and I'd 
> have to kill this message to verify it... The upshot is that the cde 
> login screen doesn't come up when I make the change to Xservers.

	A reboot would probably fix this but a more elegant solution might
be to use the command

	# /usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -reset

to reset the dtlogin program.  Where I get fuzzy is how/if a .xserverrc file
trumps the server started by dtlogin.  Note that for other systems using
XDM the file to be changed is /usr/X11/lib/xdm/Xservers (or for Sun
/usr/openwin/lib/xdm/Xservers).
	Hope this helps, perhaps somebody else can followup with a more
informed suggestion.

Cheers,
-Mike

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Last post on Apr 25, 2000