Installing X11
How to install X11, fix the libXt.so.6 bug, and install VNC.
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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.
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.
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!
Thanks Ian, I’m glad you find the information here useful.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
hmm….. ok, that’s too bad. I’ll leave the libXt instructions as is.
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.
Thanks for the catch Surak, I’ve fixed the apt-get errors and added a few words on vnc and nx.
The wiki says to start up vncviewer:
vncviewer :5901
I believe two colons are required before the 5901.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
icewm-gnome-support: Depends: libgnome-desktop-2-11 (>= 1:2.25.90) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages
————————————————————————
Any suggestion on how to fix this?
Thanks in advance.
My apologies for poor text formatting in above post. I realized it after posting.
Sorry!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
Thanks for the tip mitek, I’m sure it’ll help a lot of people.
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
)
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
hmm….I’ve never used xfm before. Maybe you can try icewm to see if that works?
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?
I’m actually using xfe aptitude install xfe and works really well for me
it even has a text editor
Great find JGM, thanks for the link.
Ok, I got EmelFM2 to install, I’m starting to get the hangof it
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