X Window System on Solaris(TM)

David Holland

   XFree86 Project

Marc Aurele La France

   XFree86 Project

Alan Coopersmith

   Oracle Corp.

   X Version 11, Release 7.7
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   Table of Contents

   The VT-switching sub-system in Solaris
   Notes for building X11R7.7 on Solaris
   Notes for running Xorg on Solaris
   Bug Notification

The VT-switching sub-system in Solaris

   The original virtual terminal sub-system is a undocumented, and
   unsupported feature of Solaris x86 releases 2.1 through 7. It
   was removed in Solaris 8 and later releases, and was never
   present on Solaris SPARC. Support for this version of virtual
   terminals is only present in Xorg 1.6.x and earlier releases of
   Xorg, and has been removed in Xorg 1.7 and later. If you use
   this form of virtual terminals, you do so at YOUR OWN RISK.

   A new virtual terminal sub-system has been introduced in
   Solaris 11, and is also available in systems based on the
   OpenSolaris or illumos sources. This version is supported on
   both SPARC and x86 platforms, though SPARC support is limited
   to devices with "Coherent Console" support in the kernel frame
   buffer driver. Support for it is found only in Xorg 1.7 and
   later server releases.

   When available, the virtual terminals of Solaris work basically
   the same way as most other VT sub-systems.

Notes for building X11R7.7 on Solaris

    1. Both GCC, and the Sun Studio compilers are supported by
       X11R7.7. The minimum recommended GCC release is 3.4. Some
       earlier GCC's are known to not work and should be avoided.
       You should also make certain your version of GCC predefines
       `sun'. If needed edit /usr/local/lib/gcc-lib/*/*/specs, and
       modify the *predefines: line.
    2. To build X11R7.7 with GCC you need gcc and (optionally)
       c++filt from GNU binutils. Don't install gas or ld from GNU
       binutils, use the one provided by Sun.
    3. If you are using Sun compilers to compile the X11R7.7
       distribution, you need to modify your PATH appropriately so
       the Sun compiler tools are available. Normally, they should
       be in /opt/SUNWspro/bin
    4. You MUST put /usr/ccs/bin at the front of your PATH. There
       are known problems with some GNU replacements for the
       utilities found there, so the /usr/ccs/bin versions of
       these programs must be found before any possible GNU
       versions. (Most notably GNU 'ar' does not work during the
       build).

Notes for running Xorg on Solaris

    1. Depending on the release or architecture of Solaris you are
       running, you might need to install an OS driver for an
       aperture device.
       Under Solaris x86 2.5 and later, there's a system driver
       (/dev/xsvc) that provides this functionality. It will be
       detected automatically by the server, so you don't need to
       install the aperture driver.
       For older Solaris x86 and for Solaris SPARC releases, the
       source for this driver is included in
       hw/xfree86/os-support/solaris/apSolaris.shar in the xserver
       source distribution. Building, and installing the driver is
       relatively straight forward. Please read its accompanying
       README file.
    2. Xqueue is NOT supported under Solaris.

Bug Notification

   Bug reports should be reported at http://bugs.freedesktop.org/
   using the xorg product or sent to <xorg@lists.freedesktop.org>.
