Installing X11
From ComputingPlugs
You can install and run X11 on the Sheeva Plug so that you can use X11 applications. The Sheeva Plug does not have any video output so you obviously need to remotely access the X11 applications. There are a few of ways to do that; VNC, NX and X over ssh.
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Install X11
First thing is to install the X11 libraries, a few basic apps and utilities. To do that, type:
apt-get install x11-common x11-apps x11-utils
It'll take a little while to gather all the libraries for X. I would like to say that is all you need to do, but there is a bug in libXt that cause problems on some X applications. You will not see the bug right now since you have no way of running an X application just yet. I will discuss the fix at the end of this page.
X over ssh
First make sure that sshd on the Sheeva Plug allows X11 Forwarding. Edit the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config and make sure you see
X11Forwarding yes
if not, change it to yes and restart sshd with
/etc/init.d/ssh restart
You also need to install xauth in order to use X over ssh, and xauth is in the xbase-clients package. So type:
apt-get install xbase-clients
You can tell xauth is installed correctly if you type the following on another computer
ssh -X -v <SheevaPlugsIP>
and it does not say:
Remote: No xauth program; cannot forward with spoofing.
After all of that, ssh with X forwarding into the Sheeva Plug:
ssh -X <SheevaPlugsIP>
Test your X11 install by running:
xeyes
You will, of course, need to do this on a computer that will accept an X connect like any Linux machine or Cygwin/X.
Xwindow desktop
If you want an Xwindow desktop on the SheevaPlug, you'll need to install either VNC or NX. You could install both if you like and pick the one that suits the task at hand. VNC is easier to install but NX is generally faster.
VNC and IceWM
To install VNC, type:
apt-get install vnc-server
and to install IceWM type:
apt-get install icewm icewm-gnome icewm-themes
You may not want to install icewm-gnome depending on disk space. I installed it because firefox uses the gnome libraries. After that, simply type:
vncserver
to start the vncserver. If you not familiar with VNC server in Linux, the VNC desktop starts as 1, not 0 like the windows VNC server. So you need to connect to port 5901 of the Sheeva Plug to connect to the VNC server. The command to do that is:
xtightvncviewer <SheevaPlugsIP>::5901 or xtightvncviewer <SheevaPlugsIP>:1
After that, you'll have your VNC window with a nice IceWM desktop running on the Sheeva Plug. I really only use 2 applications under X; Firefox and Pan. Both run just fine on the Sheeva Plug. To get those 2 applications, just type:
apt-get install firefox apt-get install pan
Note that the only vncserver available to the Sheeva Plug is tightvnc. So make sure when you connect to the server you are using xtightvncviewer and not xvnc4viewer. It is fantastically slow if you use mix the two.
NX
You can also run NX on the SheevaPlug. Here are the details of how to install FreeNX server and the NX Open Source components.
libXt bug
Now that you have VNC and IceWM installed, you may notice that the terminal windows in VNC is a blank screen. You may also notice that the terminal is somewhat working, such that if you type a command into the window it will execute correctly. This is the libXt bug I had talked about earlier. It doesn't affect all the applications, for example firefox seems to work ok. But if does affect the terminal which is very annoying. To fix the problem would require recompiling libXt from source. If don't want to do compile your own, and you trust binary blobs from me, then you can download the library file here.
To compile your own, first add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
deb-src http://ports.ubuntu.com jaunty main restricted universe multiverse
Update apt-get and install the build tools
apt-get update apt-get install build-essential xorg-dev
Get the source to libXt
apt-get source libxt
build the library
cd /root/libxt-1.0.5 ./configure make
The end result is the file ./libxt-1.0.5/src/.libs/libXt.so.6.0.0.
The correct location of this file is in /usr/lib. If you go there, you will see the following:
root$:/usr/lib# ll libXt.so* lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2009-04-20 19:53 libXt.so -> libXt.so.6.0.0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2009-04-20 19:53 libXt.so.6 -> libXt.so.6.0.0 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1595086 2009-04-15 17:10 libXt.so.6.0.0
Most people would make a backup of the old libXt.so.6.0.0 before replacing it with the new one. That is a good practice. However, I notice a very strange behavior that if you leave the old file in the same directory, and renamed it to libXt.so.6.0.0.back for example, the softlinks libXt.so.6 will be re-pointed to the old library after a power cycle. So to eliminate the problem, I moved the backup to another directory (in my case, /root) and copy the new libXt.so.6.0.0 to /usr/lib.
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May 18 2009 3:32 pm
Please keep comments clean and constructive. Inappropriate comments will be removed. Thank you.
May 27 2009 5:14 am
I read this with great interest and thought at the end "Wouldn't it be great to have NX access rather than VNC" and I see that you have a new wiki for NX. Awesome.
May 27 2009 8:37 am
You found it?! Damn....there goes my thunder. Yeah, NX works. I'm at the process of cleaning up the server/client setup and I have to write a startup script so that the server starts at boot. Otherwise it works just fine.
May 28 2009 4:53 am
Sorry to steal your thunder ... I found it by clicking on "recent changes" I've found vnc frustratingly slow in the past and NX is much faster. Seeing as the plug is headless to start with it makes sense to use NX if possible. I've found a lot of good stuff on your site. Keep up the good work!
May 28 2009 9:37 am
Thanks Ian, I'm glad you find the information here useful.
Jun 08 2009 6:20 pm
I tried to install VNC per the instructions here.
apt-get install VNC
does not work --- I got an error that the package didn't exist. I looked around in aptitude and found that "tightvncserver" does exist, and installed that.
Oddly, when I was doing the "apt-get install icewm...." line, it tried to reconfigure hald, hung and eventually failed. From that point forward, hald will not start cleanly on reboot even after removing all the stuff I had just added (with "apt-get remove" everywhere I did an "apt-get install"
Anyone had *that* experience?
Jun 08 2009 9:31 pm
Tom, I fixed the statement so that it is "apt-get install vnc-server". Thanks for the heads up.
I don't know about icewm reconfiguring hald. Its been a while since I've installed vnc and I don't remember if it reconfigured hal. I can check the console message the next time I reboot the server, but "dmesg" doesn't show any hald problems.
Jun 09 2009 7:55 am
Just a quick FYI: It appears that the libXt fixes were committed and are now available without having to rebuild from source.
I still had success with VNC after my first attempt, but I did have success running xterm over ssh and there were no problems there. According to the launchpad site regarding the libXt bug, the fix was committed --- so I think this source rebuild is no longer necessary.
BTW, my hal issues were clearly due to something in the installation of icewm components (probably icewm-gnome) --- I ultimately had to reflash my filesystem to get back to square one and get rid of hal. Apparently something in that set of packages was what installed hal, and the installation got hosed somewhere. I haven't tried it again since that one failed attempt --- I think I might wait until I have set myself up with an alternative boot medium (as you suggest on this site) and leave my NAND set-up as a back-up.
When I get that done I'll try the set-up again, first leaving out icewm-gnome to see if that's really the culprit, and then trying icewm-gnome to see if it wedges my system again. I'll let you know either way.
Jun 09 2009 8:40 am
Thanks for the update on libXt, I'll make a note of it on the page.
About icewm-gnome, you don't really need it unless you plan on running gnome apps. I did it for firefox because if you "apt-get firefox", it'll pull in the entire gnome desktop. At the time I though that was unnecessary, but I had to do it anyway when I started to use NX. So ultimately turned out to be a waste to install icewm-gnome.
Keep us updated on your progress, I'm sure it'll help a lot of people.
Jun 09 2009 7:06 pm
Update on libXt and Hal:
No, libXT is not fixed in repositories. The launchpad issue is closed with a supposed fix, but apparently the fix has not propagated to the repositories that apt-get uses on the sheevaplug.
I was able to get vnc running without hal being installed by leaving off the icewm-gnome install. VNC works, but as you say the xterm window is busted.
Xterm looks fine when displayed on a remote X server through ssh, though.
Guess it's still necessary to build libXt from source. Thanks for the instructions.
Jun 10 2009 11:13 pm
hmm..... ok, that's too bad. I'll leave the libXt instructions as is.
Jun 19 2009 11:30 pm
Excellent website!
Some of the "apt-get"s are missing the "install", could be a trouble for newbies.
Also, I think it is worth the observation to make it clear that someone could choose between VNC OR NX...just for people new to Linux.
Jun 21 2009 12:04 am
Thanks for the catch Surak, I've fixed the apt-get errors and added a few words on vnc and nx.
Jun 26 2009 12:37 pm
The wiki says to start up vncviewer:
vncviewer :5901
I believe two colons are required before the 5901.
Jun 27 2009 11:52 am
Thanks, I got that fixed.
Oddly enough, the single colon also worked if you're using xtightvncviewer 1.3.9. It didn't work with 1.2.x.
Jun 29 2009 5:27 am
You can even drive a monitor directly with an USB DVI adapter:
http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=107.msg2689#msg2689
I installed your patched libXt, but still have problems:
Menus under Gnome only 1 pixel high at the top of the screen, strange behaviour under XFCE, KDE eats all RAM, but icewm and Firefox work.
Jun 30 2009 9:20 am
Yeah, I read about that. It is pretty neat that it all works but I'm not too into the idea of using the sheeva plug as a desktop computer. There are better alternatives for that. I don't think the problem you're seeing is the same that was fixed by libXt since gnome works fine under NX. I image it has to do with the video driver of the usb adapter. Again, I don't know for sure and I can't test it because I don't have the setup. If you figure it out, let us know, I'm sure lots of people would be interested.
Jun 30 2009 11:38 pm
I find it quite interesting to have a X11 box that uses 4 W idle. This is really low power. I don't know of an alternative that needs so few power.
Jul 20 2009 4:01 am
Hi,
I am trying to install IceWM on my sheevaplug, and got the following error [in the end]:
------------------------------------------------------------------------ root@debian:~# apt-get install icewm icewm-gnome icewm-themes Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Note, selecting icewm-gnome-support instead of icewm-gnome Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
E: Broken packages ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any suggestion on how to fix this? Thanks in advance.
Jul 20 2009 4:06 am
My apologies for poor text formatting in above post. I realized it after posting. Sorry!
Jul 23 2009 10:58 am
it may be possible that the repository is broken, TomR from above also had problems with icewm-gnome. He got around it by just not installing icewm-gnome. VNC should still work, maybe you can try that first.
Aug 15 2009 12:40 pm
Hi I am having the same problem as in the post above saying that icewm-gnome won't be installed as well as firefox.
Is there a way to fix this? Can I download it on another machine and install it from an usb drive?
VNC does work without the gnome package.Aug 16 2009 2:32 pm
Perhaps it'll work if you install the entire gnome desktop. Sorry, I can't walk you through this because I already now gnome installed (for NX) so I'm only guessing that it'll work. Please try that and see if it does.
Oct 16 2009 11:42 am
I had some of the same problems with hal on my system. It wasn't, however, caused by icewm components. I didn't attempt to install these. The problem was caused by the apt-get install xbase-clients. After I removed hal and all it's dependencies (apt-get remove hal), I was able to get X forwarding and tightvnc to work for me. I'm using the following repositories:
deb http://ports.ubuntu.com jaunty main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://debian.slimdevices.com stable main
deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian unstable main
Thanks once again for the sweet work.
Nov 17 2009 12:45 pm
I may also use Openbox with lxpanel :
apt-get install openbox obconf lxpanel
It proves to run faster than icewm on my plug.
I also suggest to use midori which is based on WebKit. This browser is very fast :
apt-get install midori
Dec 02 2009 7:56 pm
I installed vnc and corrected libXt binary you provided.
Now xterm is working fine.
The problem is when in xterm I'm trying to run "mc" - It shows me black terminal window.
Dec 03 2009 7:07 pm
After searching I found that missing is /etc/X11/rgb.txt file.
You can find it's content at:
http://cvsweb.xfree86.org/cvsweb/*checkout*/xc/programs/rgb/rgb.txt?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain
Dec 07 2009 11:21 am
Thanks for the tip mitek, I'm sure it'll help a lot of people.
Dec 15 2009 2:28 pm
I am having trouble with a missing file, it stops installation of x11, Xbase and vnc-server. The code is the same for all 3:
Err http://ports.ubuntu.com jaunty-updates/main libgl1-mesa-glx 7.4-0ubuntu3.1 404 Not Found
Failed to fetch http://ports.ubuntu.com/pool/main/m/mesa/libgl1-mesa-glx_7.4-0ubuntu3.1_armel.deb 404 Not Found
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?
I am a total linux newb, suggestions? (to fix this :) )
Dec 15 2009 9:04 pm
ok, I did an 'apt-get update' and repeated. Everything installed ok, I can use tightvnc and see a desktop. I installed xfm file manager, but it won't run, it shows in the taskbar for an instant, then gone. Some of the other apps don't work, some do. I'm thinking I must be missing some type of system files but have no idea what. Any help would be appreciated
Dec 16 2009 3:44 pm
hmm....I've never used xfm before. Maybe you can try icewm to see if that works?
Dec 16 2009 8:35 pm
I installed IceWM, just as detailed in your page, but I would like a file manager to use so I can start to configure the system how I want (of course there are other ways, I'm lazy, and a windows refugee). Is there a file manager that works well for IceWM on a plug?
Dec 16 2009 8:48 pm
Ok, I got EmelFM2 to install, I'm starting to get the hangof it :)
Apr 04 2010 10:57 am
Hi all,
I managed to fix the terminal bug without recompiling the libXt just by copying rgb.txt from /usr/share/vim/vim72 to directories as mentioned on this threat:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=192327
Hope this helps
Apr 04 2010 11:04 am
I'm actually using xfe aptitude install xfe and works really well for me :) it even has a text editor
Apr 27 2010 1:27 pm
Great find JGM, thanks for the link.
Sep 10 2010 8:46 am
Kenny,
Killer page ! Was up and running without chasing my tail a bit, thanks to you !
very impressive and concise.
jr