3 Installing the Binaries

Contents of this section

The binary distribution is composed of a number of gzipped tar archives which contains the executables, servers, fonts, libraries, include files, man pages, config files, and the server link kit. All tar archives should be extracted as root with / as the default directory. The full distribution takes over 40MB of disk space. The file names are converted to be compatible with CD-rom conventions.

Note that many clients were moved from the X11R6 distribution to the `contrib' area. However, they are still distributed with the XFree86 binary distribution.

The contents of the archives are:

REQUIRED:

X311doc.tgz: READMEs and XFree86 specific man pages.
X311bin.tgz: all of the executable X client applications.
X311fnts.tgz: all fonts
X311lib.tgz: data files needed at runtime

Choose at least one of the following to match your hardware:

X311SVGA.tgz: the 8-bit pseudo-color X server for Super VGA cards
X311VG16.tgz: the 4-bit pseudo-color X server for VGA & SVGA cards.
X311Mono.tgz: the Monochrome X Server
X3118514.tgz: the X server for IBM 8514/A and compatible boards
X311AGX.tgz: the X server for AGX boards
X311Ma8.tgz: the X server for ATI Mach8 boards
X311Ma32.tgz: the X server for ATI Mach32 boards
X311Ma64.tgz: the X server for ATI Mach64 boards
X311P9K.tgz: the X server for P9000 based boards
X311S3.tgz: the X server for S3 based boards
X311W32.tgz: the X server for ET4000/W32 based boards

OPTIONAL:

X311fsrv.tgz: the font server with man pages.
X311prog.tgz: the include/X11 header files and static libraries needed only for compiling other X applications
X311man.tgz: all man pages
X311link.tgz: the server reconfiguration kit.

If this is your first time, then you should be able to safely install all of the packages. As a minimal install, you'll need doc, bin, fonts lib and one X server.

To unpack and install the archives:

create some destination directory in which you'd like the X distribution to live. /usr/X11R6 is recommended, but if that partition is full (as it is on my machine), then just create an alternate directory, and sym-link /usr/X11R6 to this place. ie, on my machine, I do the following:
```
    % cd /usr/local
    % mkdir X11R6
    % ln -s /usr/local/X11R6 /usr/X11R6
```
You must be logged in as root to unpack the archives and use a `umask' value of 022. Typing `umask 022' sets it. Caution: If you do not extract the files as user `root' with the correct umask you may not be able to run XFree86 3.1.1. The X server needs special permissions that are only granted to the root user. You must also cd to / before extracting the archives.
Create a symbolic link in /usr/X11R6/bin named `X' that points to the server that matches your video card: See the XF86_* man pages for hardware details. For example, if you have an ET4000 based SVGA card:
```
    cd /usr/X11R6/bin
    rm -f X
    ln -s XF86_SVGA X
```

Note: you don't need to uncompress the fonts files in lib/X11/fonts. If you want to uncompress them anyway, don't forget to run `mkfontdir' in each directory after that.

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