[arachne] Re: Arachne for Linux

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Glenn McCorkle wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Jun 2005 12:04:24 -0400 (EDT), Steve wrote:
> 
> > wife's Xandros Linux (Debian/KDE derivative), I just get a
> > black screen.  After escaping back to X, the only message is
> > [svgalib: Allocated virtual console #10]
> 
> 
> arachne-svgalib needs to be run directly from the CLI either before
> starting X or after sutting down X

  Yup.  I "knew" that, but didn't have a Linux CLI when I 
tried.  (Xandros was "broken" at the time... Actually 
Xandros is seriously broken all the time, but it's the one 
my wife seems to like best.)
  Anyway, I figured, "Hey, zgv invokes svgalib from X, maybe 
Arachne does now too.  Can't hurt to try."
 
> This not due to any problem in Arachne herslf.
> 
> But rather it is a basic incompatability between X and svgalib

  I believe you may be mistaken in that.  Try installing and 
running the vga version of zgv from X.  You should be dumped 
into a console with zgv running svgalib.  Hit Esc from 
within zgv, and you'll be back in your X session again.
 
> X and ggi play together nicely.

  Yup.  That's the way I always ran Arachne... resource hog 
that GGI was.

> X and svgalib do not.

  Unless svgalib is invoked by zgv.  In that case, both X 
and svga run concurrently, without interfering with each 
other.   This was true as early as RH 4.1, and is true 
on the latest Xandros (however not demonstrably true on 
FreeBSD... yet).

  According to the man page, zgv goes into suspend 
mode whenever you switch away from it, so you might think 
that zgv and X don't actually run concurrently... however, 
if I leave zgv up on the monitor, and then "ssh -X" into 
that machine, I can run X apps on it (displayed remotely) 
while still using zgv on that host.  Both X and svgalib are 
literally running concurrently without either being 
suspended.

  If I try to run zgv on FreeBSD at all, I lose display all 
together... X and consoles.  Haven't got the config figured 
out quite yet.  Built-in video on MB + separate AGP card I 
think may be at least part of the problem.

-- 
Steve Ackman
http://twoloonscoffee.com       (Need beans?)
http://twovoyagers.com          (glass, linux & other stuff)


Arachne at FreeLists
-- Arachne, The Web Browser/Suite for DOS and Linux --

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