Bugs found so far in XFree86/OS2 3.2/3.2A

If you came here by a notice of this URL in some newsgroup article: Here is the toplevel of the XFree86/OS2 pages.

Generally, please ensure, that you have NO HARDWARE CONFLICTS, and that your system runs stable in general. Flaky hardware and improper OS/2 configuration may hide various effects or cause problems that wouldn't be there otherwise. Don't expect that XFree86/OS2 can turn an instable OS/2 into a stable one.

List of recent files

• Filelist of XFree86-3.2
• Filelist of XFree86-3.2A

• Mach64: Rage-II, 264CT, 264VT, 264GT chipsets
• S3-ViRGE: Diamond Stealth 3D 3000 series cards

Binaries for the full and small servers should be available in a few days from the common XFree86 archives. They are currently here: full Mach64 server (1.1MB), small Mach64 server (730K), full S3V server (1.1MB), small S3V server (780K)

The beta version XFree86/OS2-3.2A has these patches integrated.

Bug descriptions for older releases

• XFree86/OS2 3.1.2D
• XFree86/OS2 3.1.2E
• XFree86/OS2 3.1.2F and G

Severe bugs

(3.2/3.2A)Linker defective in EMX-0.9C without fix 1

The linker ld.exe of EMX-0.9c produces defective executables in some situations, which then dump core in various unspecific ways. If you want to port software and have EMX-0.9C installed, you *must* install emxfix01.zip or later (they are cumulative) in order to link X applications correctly. If you just run X applications, but not develop them, the fix is recommended, though.

Minor bugs

(3.2/3.2A)Possible race condition in xinit

There has been a report that xinit might cause X applications to be run in xinitrc.cmd not to be started when the X server option -auth /path/.Xauthority is specified. This will be analyzed further. If this happens, run xinitrc.cmd manually from a PM CMD window.

(3.2)Xman is missing from distribution

Xman seems to become the favorite problem of all XFree86/OS2 distributions. Get FX0005.zip.

(3.2)Typo in distributed xinitrc.cmd

There is a typo in the xinitrc.cmd which causes problems when people have a MANPATH and want to have xman started at the beginning. The following version is a fixed xinitrc.cmd.

(3.2)XF32slib.zip is missing

This is the set of statical X11 libraries, required for certain applications. Get the file from set.gmd.de (800K). This is not uploaded to other servers yet.

(3.2/3.2A)Matrox misdetected in Superprobe

Superprobe does not yet detect the Matrox Millenium, and reports them as an "Oak" chipset with 256K RAM. This is half the truth, because infact such a chipset sits on the board for the standard VGA support. Ignore the misdetection and don't report it; the SVGA server of 3.2 correctly recognizes the Millenium and works with it.

(3.2/3.2A)xterm does not understand +/-cm option

Xterm doesn't know some other options as well, because the OS/2 and XFree86 code base drifted for this program (different main program code). The public fix FX0006 corrects this problem.

General problems

There exists a general hardware conflict between certain S3 or Mach32/64 based cards and COM4 (port address 0x2e8)

This is a deficiency of these chip sets, unfortunately. If this happens, the only workaround known is to disable the COM4 port, or switch it to a base address other than 0x2e8.

Server breaks SLIP/PPP connection

No solution known yet, but at least there has been recently a report for Linux in the XFree86 mailing list indicating that this is not an OS/2 problem. It was reported that this problem should not happen with the VGA16 server. It is possible that this happens with bad designed serial I/O hardware which does not decode I/O port addresses correctly, and may then point out some address conflict between video and serial I/O card. If you know more about this, please tell me.

Superprobe misdetects the videocard.

Double check that you really have the hardware which was sold to you We have found one case where Superprobe was right, and the dealer was lying. If you are right, this turned out to be almost always a problem with Superprobe, not with OS/2 or XFree86/OS2. Please send the output of Superprobe from now on directly to xfree86@xfree86.org with a detailed description of what this card really is.

Things that are not a bug

"Cannot open \PIPE\XF86.0" error message together with "Error opening font fixed

In one reported case, it turned out that XFree86 had been installed on a FAT file system. You mustn't install XFree86 on a FAT drive; you need a HPFS, NFS, or ext2fs drive which understands long file names. I suspect that most problems with \PIPE\XF86.0 are actually related to attempts to install the system on FAT. THIS WON'T WORK! (and will never be supported).

"Error opening font fixed", maybe also the \PIPE\XF86.0 message (unverified).

Ensure that you don't have the option SET EMXOPT=-t set in your CONFIG.SYS file. XFree86 files mustn't be crippled to 8.3 format; this won't work.

Mistakes in the documentation

Inaccuracies or omissions from the XFree86 beta docs

(3.2) Where is the fix for the sources on this bugs page, which was mentioned in latestos2.html?

Well, this is a mistake in the file latestos2.html :-)

Useful hints and tricks

Is the Matrox Mystique supported?

No, because we don't have docs, and despite of rumor in the newsgroups it is NOT a stripped-down version of the Millenium, and there is no trick to tweak the Millenium server (SVGA) to get it running. However, there is an URL how to get it to work with the VGA16 server.