X server on my laptop                                  2-13-2006



I installed cygwin (the setup.exe link on www.cygwin.com) which

by default, did NOT include the X server.  I had to also download

and install the xorg-x11-xwin: Cygwin/X X server (I think that

was the package that had the xserver in it).  Just follow the

"Cygwin/X Home" link from www.cygwin.com and click the setup.exe

link you find on that page.



To start up the X server, start a cygwin window

   Start -> Programs -> Cygwin -> Cygwin Bash Shell

In that shell, enter

   startx

   xhost +



You can then start X clients on your laptop by

   export DISPLAY=raj:0.0     <-- Not needed if using SecureCRT

   xclock &

                                                                                

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Use xwininfo to determine the geometry setting of an existing window.           

                                                                                

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To authorize anybody to connect to your X server,

    xhost +



But Darrel Long said a long time ago that xhost was insecure and

that xauth was better.

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To restart the X-window, which by the way is /usr/lpp/X11/bin/X,

hit Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.        

                                                     

---->>>  Do not simply get back to the green screen & logout.

---->>>  Since you start up X with an open xinit, the X-server

---->>>  "divorces" itself from the initial shell.  Thus,

---->>>  killing the initial shell doesn't kill X.

                       

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Background:  The X-server controls the keyboard & mouse & screen,

             contrasted to the window manager (mwm) that is simply an

X client (remember Sam's lecture?), albiet a special client, *the*

one and only special client that's identified itself to X as the

window manager.



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If you ever have trouble with :0.0, say you can't write to jasper:0.0

from another machine even though that machine is in xhost, then perhaps

you're not using 0.  echo $DISPLAY and see what it is.  One day, I was

using jasper:1.0.  Turns out there was extra junk in /tmp/.X11-unix,

namely /tmp/.X11-unix/X0, ...X2, and ...X3.  When the X-server comes

up, it looks in this directory and assigns the first unused display

number it can to the console, in this case it was 1.  So I was jasper:1.0,

not :0.0 like normal.  The solution was to just erase the other files

and restart the x-server.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

  To see the list of colors available & defined to X, see the rgb.txt

file, in /usr/lpp/X11/lib/X11/rgb.txt.



  To see the list of fonts available, you can either type xlsfonts or

look in /usr/lpp/X11/lib/X11/fonts.  The files here will all be

compressed pcf files, i.e. Rom10.iso1.pcf.Z, which you use with

aixterm for example, via

  aixterm -fn Rom10.iso1



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  To merge changes recently made to your ~/.Xdefaults file,

xrdb -merge .Xdefaults



  There's also

xrdb -q | grep -i gsc  for example, to see what's in effect,

xrdb -f  to flush everything



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From my .xinitrc years ago,



xset s 1800       # Set screen-saver timeout value to 30 minutes.

                  #     Default was 600 seconds (10 minutes).

xset b 66 50 40   # Set bell pitch to 50 Mhz and duration to 40 milliseconds.

                  #     Default was 400 Mhz & 100 milliseconds.



You can use xset q to see what the current setting is and just

xset to see some help text.