HOWTO: xorg/x11 without hald/dbus and with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE working

[vermaden]

There were many questions regarding the oldschool xorg/x11 setup without hald/dbus and with old usefull terminate method by ctrl-alt-backspace, here is a short howto how to achieve this.

1. Install FreeBSD along with x11/xorg or add it by package.

root # pkg_add -r xorg

1.1. Enable and start moused(8) daemon if you already do not have it running.

root # echo moused_enable=\"YES\" >> /etc/rc.conf
root # /etc/rc.d/moused start

2. Generate new config.

root # X -configure

3. Move config to its proper place.

root # mv /root/xorg.conf.new /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf

4. Add needed options to config in sections ServerFlags and InputDevice.

root # vi /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "ServerFlags"
  (...)
  Option "DontZap"         "off"
  Option "AllowEmptyInput" "off"
  Option "AutoAddDevices"  "off"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  (...)
  Option "XkbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
EndSection

The following options are needed to have working x11 without hald/dbus:

Section "ServerFlags"
  (...)
  Option "AllowEmptyInput" "off"
  Option "AutoAddDevices"  "off"
EndSection

... and following for "three kings" or CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE terminate keyboard shrtcut:

Section "ServerFlags"
  (...)
  Option "DontZap" "off"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  (...)
  Option "XkbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
EndSection

5. Basic client configuration.

user % cat > ${HOME}/.xinitrc << EOF
xterm &
twm
EOF

6. Start x11/xorg.

user % xinit -- -dpi 75 -nolisten tcp

Example full xorg.conf config:

Section "ServerFlags"
  Option "DontZap"         "off"
  Option "AllowEmptyInput" "off"
  Option "AutoAddDevices"  "off"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier "Keyboard0"
  Driver     "kbd"
  Option     "XkbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier  "xorg0"
  Screen 0    "screen0"   0 0
  InputDevice "mouse0"    "CorePointer"
  InputDevice "keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Module"
  Load "dbe"
  Load "dri"
  Load "extmod"
  Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier "mouse0"
  Driver     "mouse"
  Option     "Protocol"     "auto"
  Option     "Device"       "/dev/sysmouse"
  Option     "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
  Identifier "monitor0"
  Option     "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
  Identifier "gfx0"
  Driver     "intel"
  Option     "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  Identifier "screen0"
  Device     "gfx0"
  Monitor    "monitor0"
  SubSection "Display"
    Modes "1440x900"
  EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Files"
  ModulePath "/usr/local/lib/xorg/modules"
  FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
  FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
  FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/OTF"
  FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
  FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
  FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
EndSection

For comparision, for OpenBSD its like that:

1. Install OpenBSD along with xenocara/x11.

2. Basic client configuration.

user % cat > ${HOME}/.xinitrc << EOF
xterm &
twm
EOF

3. Start x11/xorg.

user % xinit -- -dpi 75 -nolisten tcp

ADDED 2009/11/16
----------------

If you would like to disable CAPS LOCK key, then you should make the folllowing change in the xorg.conf file:

Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier "Keyboard0"
  Driver     "kbd"
- Option     "XkbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
+ Option     "XkbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp,ctrl:nocaps"                                                                    
EndSection

If you would like to also set other then default keyboard layout, then add this to xorg.conf file:

Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier "Keyboard0"
  Driver     "kbd"
  Option     "XkbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
+ Option     "XkbLayout" "pl"
EndSection

[Beastie]

A few additions/comments, if you don't mind


I usually only have AutoAddDevices. AFAIK, AllowEmptyInput is not necessary. man xorg.conf:

Option "AllowEmptyInput" "boolean"
If enabled, don't add the standard keyboard and mouse drivers,
if there are no input devices in the config file. Enabled by
default if AutoAddDevices and AutoEnableDevices is enabled, oth-
erwise disabled. If AllowEmptyInput is on, devices using the
kbd, mouse or vmmouse driver are ignored.

Users may also have to enable/start the mouse daemon if they haven't already done so during/after the setup:

Originally Posted by /etc/rc.conf

[...]
moused_enable="YES"
[...]

# /etc/rc.d/moused start


Finally, you may add -nolisten tcp to xinit if you don't need remote access to X.
You may also add an alias to your shell's rc file to save some typing:

alias xinit xinit -- -dpi 75 -nolisten tcp

[vermaden]

Originally Posted by Beastie

A few additions/comments, if you don't mind

I dont mind, I am open to discussion

Originally Posted by Beastie

I usually only have AutoAddDevices. AFAIK, AllowEmptyInput is not necessary.

I have just unscrewed my laptop (with FreeBSD) to make it little cleaner and to replace thermal grease, I will verify that after cleaning.

Originally Posted by Beastie

Users may also have to enable/start the mouse daemon if they haven't already done so during/after the setup:

# /etc/rc.d/moused start

My fault, I assumed that everybody has moused enabled.

Originally Posted by Beastie

, you may add -nolisten tcp to xinit if you don't need remote access to X.
You may also add an alias to your shell's rc file to save some typing:

alias xinit xinit -- -dpi 75 -nolisten tcp

Along with -br for black backgound (or -wr for white backgound) and -tst (disables testing extensions).

Thanks for adding your input mate.

[Oko]

HAL will not be needed nor used by Xorg from the next release. All code relying on HAL is currently being removed from XOrg. Check the irc channel and developers mailing lists. I recently talked to one of core developers who came from the major XOrg conference.

Finally, little sanity among X developers

[BSDfan666]

That's good news, annoyed by the assumption of such a pointless feature.. HAL.. how silly.

[vermaden]

@Oko

That is what I call a good news

[Beastie]

That was expected. They took the decision, finally!

Anyway, I never used it. On all machines I've ever tried it, I had problems with optical drives. Automounting never worked and used to lock the drives and then the entire machine so bad, I had to power it down completely to recover (i.e. no power cycling possible). Options that were transfered from xorg.conf to HAL never worked anymore. As for polling every freaking piece of H/W every 2 seconds, argh!
Native drivers are like a billion times better and use way less reserved memory and processing power.

Let's hope DeviceKit (or any other replacement) will be just a *little bit* better. I'm not expecting too much, though.

[Carpetsmoker]

Good news indeed.

But what will they do now? Revert to the "classic" Xorg behaviour? Or some HAL-like replacement?

[vermaden]

@Carpetsmoker

s/HAL/DeviceKIT

According to several comparisions between hal and devicekit, hal is described as big monolithic shit that probes hardware every 2 seconds while devicekit is simple and modular blessing that heals all hal problems, we will have to wait to verify that, but IMHO we will be changing from one shit to another ... I just hope that I am wrong.

[Beastie]

That's what they always say every time they reimplement something for the hundredth time or ditch it for another "just-as-bad" (or at least "not-any-better") replacement.

*All* I hope for is that they continue to offer a choice between XYZ and nothing, and I'll only use native drivers as I've always done.
I personally never understood the use of such an additional layer.

[TerryP]

Some form of Hardware Abstraction is usually a good idea when writing something like an X Server, just wait until HAL9000 starts speaking to your toaster oven :-P.

X developers sooner or later always sees the light of sanity... or meet an ALSA style straight jacket.


I've no beefs with PolicyKit or PackageKit, but no opinions on HAL, other then we've survived for years without it in X.Org, most of them perfectly fine. The changeover didn't screw me in the least, whatever's happened to anyone else.

[bashrules]

I'm in the process of setting up NetBSD's pkgsrc on top of Slackware 13. I want to have an "old school" system without dbus/hal etc.

A lot of programs from pkgsrc have dbus as a non-optional dependency. I can't avoid not to install some of these. Firefox comes to my mind. Any idea how to install such programs without installing dbus/hal as well?

I'm using pkgsrc-2009Q4.

Bash

[adamk]

Originally Posted by bashrules

I'm in the process of setting up NetBSD's pkgsrc on top of Slackware 13. I want to have an "old school" system without dbus/hal etc.

A lot of programs from pkgsrc have dbus as a non-optional dependency. I can't avoid not to install some of these. Firefox comes to my mind. Any idea how to install such programs without installing dbus/hal as well?

I'm using pkgsrc-2009Q4.

Bash

Rewrite the code to remove the dependency? :-)

Adam

[vermaden]

Originally Posted by bashrules

I'm in the process of setting up NetBSD's pkgsrc on top of Slackware 13.

Slackware is still Linux, what You expected, that You could get away without hald or dbus these times with Linux?

If You find a way to get along without them, then let us know.

[IdOp]

@ bashrules: Is there a reason to want to roll your own firefox for Linux? (There might be, just asking.)

Re firefox itself, the Linux binary distributed by mozilla doesn't seem to require libhal or libdbus:

> ldd /usr/local/firefox-3.6.2/firefox-bin
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0xb803a000)
        libxul.so => not found
        libmozjs.so => not found
        libxpcom.so => not found
        libplds4.so => not found
        libplc4.so => not found
        libnspr4.so => not found
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0xb8035000)
        libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7ccf000)
        libatk-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so.0 (0xb7cb6000)
        libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7c33000)
        libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 (0xb7c1c000)
        libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 (0xb7c13000)
        libpango-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0 (0xb7bd7000)
        libcairo.so.2 => /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2 (0xb7b77000)
        libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0xb7b3d000)
        libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0xb7b39000)
        libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0xb7a6c000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb7985000)
        libasound.so.2 => /usr/lib/libasound.so.2 (0xb78c4000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0xb789e000)
        libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb77b8000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb77ac000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0xb7660000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb8064000)
        libXcomposite.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcomposite.so.1 (0xb765d000)
        libXdamage.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXdamage.so.1 (0xb765a000)
        libXfixes.so.3 => /usr/lib/libXfixes.so.3 (0xb7655000)
        libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0xb762b000)
        libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb761d000)
        libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0xb7615000)
        libXinerama.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXinerama.so.1 (0xb7612000)
        libXi.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXi.so.6 (0xb760a000)
        libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0xb7604000)
        libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1 (0xb75fa000)
        libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 (0xb75d3000)
        libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0xb7563000)
        libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0xb754f000)
        libpng12.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 (0xb7514000)
        libpixman-1.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpixman-1.so.0 (0xb74de000)
        libxcb-xlib.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0 (0xb74dc000)
        libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/libxcb.so.1 (0xb74c5000)
        librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0xb74bc000)
        libexpat.so.1 => /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1 (0xb749c000)
        libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0xb7498000)
        libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0xb7493000)

[bashrules]

I'm back.

I just figured out that you only get a dbus dependency if you play too much with pkgsrc's configuration file I Usually, there is none

In the last couple of hours, I compiled a lot of pkgsrc programs. It works like a charm on Slackware I tried this already a few years ago, but gave up because too many pkgsrc programs didn't compile.

Welcome to BSD on Linux.

[bashrules]

Some other important programs from the pkgsrc do include dbus, though.

.include "../../sysutils/dbus/buildlink3.mk"
.include "../../sysutils/dbus-glib/buildlink3.mk"

That are audacious and xfce4. Let's see how many other programs I'll encounter lateron. Oh well. I'm about to accept my fate.

Bash