New to minix, Xorg and WM

[Garry Ricketson]

Hello all,
 I am new to Minix3, recently installed it to a Virtual Box VM,
 Is it possible to install Xorg or X window of some kind, and
a window manager, like OpenBox, or TWM,   also if there are
any other options for some sort of "graphical shell", that
perhaps does not need any X systems,...
 Guess that is about all for now. Any info on this
would be appreciated.

[Jean-Baptiste Boric]

Welcome aboard,

Xorg is available if you download an official image or if you build it from source along with the rest of the system. Like NetBSD, the default window manager is TWM ; others are available from pkgsrc.

There used to be support for the EDE desktop environment (and it seems to be available with the latest pkgsrc bulk build), but I don't know if it still works right now.

While there is support for framebuffer on ARM, there is no other graphical shell besides X11 and there is no framebuffer console either.

[Garry Ricketson]

Thank you , "Jean-Baptiste Boric"

Xorg is available if you download an official image

  Do you mean a "official  image", of Minix3 or is there a "official", Xorg image ? Sorry if
this sounds dense,  The Minix3 image I used to install. was from about a year ago,...based
on your reply it sounds like there is a newer one,...?
 TWM will be fine, I had tried 'pkgin search Xorg' but nothing was found, maybe I wrong
name ?, I did see some lib packages related to xorg and also on the installation guide
about needing to do a 'xorg.conf' if it is a virtual box VM . So since it is mentioned
in the installation, I figured it must be available.
  Also saw a couple of topic/threads here, but nothing very clear. I appreciate your taking
the time to respond.
from Garry

[Jean-Baptiste Boric]

  Do you mean a "official  image", of Minix3 or is there a "official", Xorg image ?

Official image. There is no separate X11 image, neither there is a X11 pkgsrc package on recent releases.

X11 is built as part of the MINIX source tree, not as a pkgsrc package, but its source code is stored in a separate Git repository. Official builds are always done with X11 included, but when you cross-compile MINIX yourself X11 isn't built by default because of the separate xsrc repository.

When you install with the official ISO or the development snapshot images, X11 should be pre-installed as part of the setup script.

The Minix3 image I used to install. was from about a year ago,...based
on your reply it sounds like there is a newer one,...?

There hasn't been a new stable release since, but there has been a number of development snapshots. Since there has been enough work done since the last stable release to make upgrading from source impossible, I'd advise installing the latest development snapshot at the moment.

There is a link in the download page which points to http://download.minix3.org/iso/snapshot/.

 TWM will be fine, I had tried 'pkgin search Xorg' but nothing was found, maybe I wrong
name ?,

Like X11, TWM is built-in (although you can also install it from pkgsrc).

 

I did see some lib packages related to xorg and also on the installation guide
about needing to do a 'xorg.conf' if it is a virtual box VM . So since it is mentioned
in the installation, I figured it must be available.

Unfortunately the MINIX documentation and wiki are getting quite stale at the moment...

I run MINIX under QEMU. I don't have an installation to double-check this, but I usually generate a xorg.conf file with X -configure and edit it to use the VESA driver and set the resolution. Running startx would then bring up X11 and TWM.

I don't know if creating a xorg.conf file is required under VirtualBox, but simply running startx should bring up X11 (or fail with an appropriate error message).

[Garry Ricketson]

Thanks again,
OK, well, I am going to try the "snapshot" you show a link to, and re-install,
 I just now looked at /  ran 'postinstall' and it appears a lot is missing on my
install, even though I had been able to install some packages, like "nano",
and do some things,... This was the impression the install guide gave me,
that Xorg should be there, and when I ran startx it just said "not found",
Part of the 'postinstall check ' says:

x11 fix:
    /etc/X11 is not a directory; skipping check

and there is much more:

rc fix:
    /usr/src/etc is not a directory; skipping check
    /usr/src/etc/rc.d is not a directory; skipping check
ss
---uid fix:
    Error users (FIX MANUALLY): _tss (missing) _tcpdump (missing) _rwhod (missing) sshd (22 != 16) ntpd (missing) _mdnsd (missing) _rtadvd (missing) named (missing) _pflogd (missing) _timedc (missing) _sdpd (missing) _httpd (missing) _proxy (missing) postfix (27 != 12) _tests (missing)
varrwho fix:
tcpdumpchroot fix:
atf fix:
    Can't find source directory for NetBSD.conf
    Can't find source directory for atf-run.hooks--------------------

 And so on,....looks like the best thing to do is try re-installing with a new image.
Thanks.

On Monday, December 5, 2016 at 8:04:27 AM UTC-6, Garry Ricketson wrote:

[Garry Ricketson]

Huray, that did the trick,
just used to most recent "snapshot" as suggested, and this time
it has X and TWM,...worked right "out of the box",.....
Thanks, I will get back later after I get things more "configured"
 I haven't even created a user yet, but tried 'startx' and this time
have the window manager,... Thanks

On Monday, December 5, 2016 at 8:04:27 AM UTC-6, Garry Ricketson wrote:

[Garry Ricketson]

Just wanted to share what I have so far,  I am having fun with this,
and thank again for the help
from Garry

On Monday, December 5, 2016 at 8:04:27 AM UTC-6, Garry Ricketson wrote:

[r0ller]

Hi Garry,

Nice! If you want to change the wm, fluxbox and jwm used to work as well some versions back so you may give them a try but I haven't checked that out for quite some time. Actually, EDE worked as well in 3.2.0 but nowadays it doesn't seem to.

Best regards,

r0ller