Felipe Alfaro Solana » X11 http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog A little bit of technology, security and networking with Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X, plus some personal opinions. Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:46:32 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 Scrolling with the Thinkpad’s TrackPoint in Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2008/10/11/scrolling-with-the-thinkpads-trackpoint-in-ubuntu-810-intrepid/ http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2008/10/11/scrolling-with-the-thinkpads-trackpoint-in-ubuntu-810-intrepid/#comments Sat, 11 Oct 2008 13:16:13 +0000 Felipe Alfaro Solana http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/?p=249 Recently, I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex and found that my Thinkpad’s TrackPoint scrolling stopped working. While searching on the Internet, I found a post called Scrolling with the Thinkpad’s TrackPoint in Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid by Phil Sung that explains in a clear and concise way how to enabling scrolling in Ubuntu 8.10 using the ThinkPad TrackPoint.

I’m quoting what Phil says in his post:

Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10) switches to evdev for X server input, which has the unfortunate side effect of breaking old EmulateWheel configurations. So scrolling using the middle button + TrackPoint (which I absolutely love) was broken for a while. However, the version of evdev in Intrepid has now caught up and supports these features. Instead of modifying your xorg.conf, create a new file called /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi with the following contents: 

<match key="info.product" string="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint">
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheel" type="string">true</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton" type="string">2</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.XAxisMapping" type="string">6 7</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.YAxisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.ZAxsisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons" type="string">true</merge>
</match>

Thanks, Phil!

]]> http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2008/10/11/scrolling-with-the-thinkpads-trackpoint-in-ubuntu-810-intrepid/feed/ 1 Nouveau: Open Source 3D acceleration for nVidia cards http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2006/12/27/nouveau-open-source-3d-acceleration-for-nvidia-cards/ http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2006/12/27/nouveau-open-source-3d-acceleration-for-nvidia-cards/#comments Wed, 27 Dec 2006 00:00:06 +0000 Felipe Alfaro Solana http://felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2006/12/27/nouveau-open-source-3d-acceleration-for-nvidia-cards/ Recently I stumbled on the Nouveau WiKi. Nouveau is a community-driven effort to develop open source X.org drivers for nVidia graphics cards:

“nouveau” [nuvo] is the french word for “new”.

The Nouveau community is reverse engineering the closed-source, privative nVidia driver. They claim that nothing currently works, but that’s not exactly true. For example, you can check in the status page that the 2D driver is working, but no 3D features are working yet.

Particularly, I find this proyect extremely interesting and fascinating. As a devoted fan of AIGLX and Beryl, I have been looking for fully-functional, performance-wise, open-source drivers for my nVidia graphics cards. The ATI open-source driver is an example of a nice job done good, but its performance is not as good as the closed fglrx driver yet.

I’m really looking forward to see what the Nouveau community can deliver and will help as much as I can, either by investing cash or by investing my testing efforts.

]]> http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2006/12/27/nouveau-open-source-3d-acceleration-for-nvidia-cards/feed/ 0 Ubuntu Edgy, ATI’s fglrx, DRI, 3D acceleration and X.org Composite extension http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2006/09/06/ubuntu-edgy-ati-fglrx-dri-3d-acceleration-and-xorg-composite-extension/ http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2006/09/06/ubuntu-edgy-ati-fglrx-dri-3d-acceleration-and-xorg-composite-extension/#comments Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:44:38 +0000 Felipe Alfaro Solana http://felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2006/09/06/ubuntu-edgy-ati-fglrx-dri-3d-acceleration-and-composite-extensions/ I think that Ubuntu Edgy Knot 2 is the first Linux distribution that enables the Composite extension by default for X.org. While this is really exciting, unfortunately it seems to negatively affect DRI and 3D acceleration when using ATI’s closed-source drivers, fglrx.

I don’t know exactly the reasons of this, but enabling Composite extensions disables ATI’s driver support for DRI and 3D acceleration. The X.org logs show DRI has been disabled, but they offer no clue on what’s going on, so I eventually found tout he answer while digging on the Ubuntu forums.

To disable Composite extensions, add the following lines to the end of /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:

Section "Extensions"
        Option "Composite" "false"
EndSection

This will bring back support for DRI, 3D acceleration and, thus, OpenGL support.

]]> http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2006/09/06/ubuntu-edgy-ati-fglrx-dri-3d-acceleration-and-xorg-composite-extension/feed/ 80 nVidia GeForce FX5200 http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/19/nvidia-geforce-fx5200/ http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/19/nvidia-geforce-fx5200/#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2005 18:36:30 +0000 Felipe Alfaro Solana http://felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/19/nvidia-geforce-fx5200/ The new nVidia GeForce FX5200 is an AGP 8X, 256MB DDR2, DVI-enabled speed-demon that, when used together with KDE 3.4 translucency effects, gives an incredible, nice-looking, awesome desktop full of window drop shadows, translucent windows and fadding effects.

However, in order to be able to get the last bit of performance out of it, I must use the propietary nVidia drivers.

The propietary nVidia drivers consist of a binary-only blob that implements the video driver that talks to to the graphics board, plus a linux kernel wrapper. The wrapper has it’s source code available, and must get compiled against the running kernel. The process of installing the nVidia driver is painless.

Installing the nVidia propietary driver.

  1. Download the latest Linux IA-32 drivers from http://www.nvidia.com
  2. Make sure the kernel sources used to build the current kernel are available, either in /usr/src/linux or /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build
  3. Run the driver, usually in the form of a self-extracting shell script.
  4. The driver will try to find a suitable, precompiled module for the current kernel or else will compile it by itself.

After the driver is installed successfully, some modifications need to be done to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Configuring X.org

  1. I did replace the “nv” X.org’s built-in nVidia driver, which lacks DRM/DRI support, with the “nvidia” propietary driver.
  2. I had to set the “AllowGLXWithComposite” option to “true” in order to get GLX to coexist with the Composite extension. If this option is missing, or set to false, the Composite extension will be disabled and GLX acceleration will prevail.
  3. Also, I had to comment out “Load” “dri” to stop GLX-accelerated applications from crashng.

My full /etc/X11/xorg.conf looks like this:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Single head configuration"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
Option "StandbyTime" "0"
Option "SuspendTime" "0"
Option "OffTime" "0"
EndSection

Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
# Load "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
Option "XkbOptions" "altwin:meta_win, ctrl:nocaps"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "BenQ"
ModelName "FP937s+"
HorizSync 31.5 - 67.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 75.0
Option "DPMS" "false"
EndSection

Section "Device"
# Option "AGPMode" "4"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "AOpen"
BoardName "FX5200"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Group 0
Mode 0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "enable"
EndSection

That’s all.

]]> http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/19/nvidia-geforce-fx5200/feed/ 2 ALPS GlidePoint under Linux with X.org http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/19/alps-glidepoint-under-linux-with-xorg/ http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/19/alps-glidepoint-under-linux-with-xorg/#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2005 18:30:51 +0000 Felipe Alfaro Solana http://felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/19/alps-glidepoint-under-linux-with-xorg/ Recently, I have been able to make the ALPS GlidePoint PS/2 Touchpad of my Packard Bell laptop to work properly under Linux and X.org X11R6 Server, including edge scrolling and tap-to-release drag lock.

The support for ALPS GlidePoint Touchpads seems a relatively recent addition, both to Linux kernels and X.org X11 servers. The first thing to check for is whether the kernel has properly detected the touchpad. The following lines should appear in the kernel message ring:

# dmesg
…
ALPS Touchpad (Glidepoint) detected
Enabling hardware tapping
input: AlpsPS/2 ALPS TouchPad on isa0060/serio1
…

In second place, make sure the synaptics X.org driver has been installed. For Fedora Core systems, this usually means installing synaptics-0.13.5-5 or a newer version:

# yum install synaptics

will usually install the synaptics RPM package which contains the X.org synaptics driver:

# rpm -qil synaptics
…
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input/synaptics_drv.o
…

Once the required pieces are all set up, the X.org configuration file must be changed in order to use the new synaptics input driver. This can be easily achieved by replacing the “InputDevice” section in “/etc/X11/xorg.conf” file for the mouse with the following:

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier "Mouse0"
   Driver     "synaptics"
   Option     "Protocol"             "auto-dev"
   Option     "Device"               "/dev/input/mice"
   Option     "ZAxisMapping"         "4 5"
   Option     "Emulate3Buttons"      "yes"
   Option     "LeftEdge"             "120"
   Option     "RightEdge"            "830"
   Option     "TopEdge"              "120"
   Option     "BottomEdge"           "650"
   Option     "FingerLow"            "14"
   Option     "FingerHigh"           "15"
   Option     "MaxTapTime"           "180"
   Option     "MaxTapMove"           "110"
   Option     "EmulateMidButtonTime" "75"
   Option     "VertScrollDelta"      "20"
   Option     "HorizScrollDelta"     "20"
   Option     "MinSpeed"             "0.2"
   Option     "MaxSpeed"             "0.5"
   Option     "AccelFactor"          "0.01"
   Option     "EdgeMotionMinSpeed"   "15"
   Option     "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed"   "15"
   Option     "UpDownScrolling"      "1"
   Option     "CircularScrolling"    "1"
   Option     "CircScrollDelta"      "0.1"
   Option     "CircScrollTrigger"    "2"
   Option     "LockedDrags"          "1"
   Option     "SHMConfig"            "on"
EndSection

Finally, the section “Module” must be modified to manually load the “synaptics” input driver provided by the synaptics RPM package:

Section "Module"
   Load "dbe"
   …
   Load "synaptics"
EndSection
]]> http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/19/alps-glidepoint-under-linux-with-xorg/feed/ 4 Preventing X11.app from automatically opening an XTerm on launch http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/18/preventing-x11app-from-automatically-opening-an-xterm-on-launch/ http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/18/preventing-x11app-from-automatically-opening-an-xterm-on-launch/#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2005 18:17:27 +0000 Felipe Alfaro Solana http://felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/18/preventing-x11app-from-automatically-opening-an-xterm-on-launch/ Mac OS X X11 Server, called X11.app, is configured to open a new xterm on launch by default. This default behavior can be pretty annoying, but can be easily disabled.

In order to stop Mac OS X X11.app from launching a new and empty xterm when launched for the first time, one must install a customized .xinitrc file into $HOME.

During start, X11.app looks for $HOME/.xinitrc and, if no one is found, it executes /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc. It’s the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc script the one that launches an empty xterm.

To stop X11.app from launching an empty xterm:

  1. cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc $HOME/.xinitrc
  2. Edit $HOME/.xinitrc and remove the line that reads "xterm &"

This will prevent X11.app from starting useless client applications, like xterm, on launch.

]]> http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2005/08/18/preventing-x11app-from-automatically-opening-an-xterm-on-launch/feed/ 9 Bring back the Win key when using X.org’s X server http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2004/05/14/bring-back-the-win-key-when-using-xorgs-x-server/ http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2004/05/14/bring-back-the-win-key-when-using-xorgs-x-server/#comments Fri, 14 May 2004 07:56:21 +0000 Felipe Alfaro Solana http://felipe-alfaro.org/blog/?p=47 Since X.org’s X server, I had been unable to use the left Win key to compose keyboard shortcuts. However, while Googling around, I learnt that adding the following line to the keyboard’s [InputDevice] section in file /etc/X11/xorg.conf will bring that support back:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
.
.
.
Option "XkbOptions" "altwin:meta_win"
EndSection

This will bring back the ability to configure shortcuts that use the left Win key, for example Win+R to invoke the “Run…” dialog box in KDE.

]]> http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2004/05/14/bring-back-the-win-key-when-using-xorgs-x-server/feed/ 3