I’m trying to get as many applications as I can running on my machine without X Windows, since it’s an old machine without a lot of memory and runs most X applications very, very slowly. I currently have FreeBSD Release 7.2 on the machine. I would really like to find a way to get SDL applications to run in a standard screen without X having to be started (or even on the machine). If it helps any, my computer is a Sony PCG-F540 laptop and when X is on it, it uses the neomagic video driver. I’ve also been able to get zgv using libsvga to display graphics.
So far, I’ve tried rebuilding SDL from scratch. I tried including as many alternative video libraries as I could find package downloads for at the FreeBSD site. I used DirectFB, libsvga and vgl. I also have libraries downloaded for GGI, but would have to build them to test further. Nano-X might be another option, but again, would have to see if I could get that to build first. I compiled SDL and made sure it included support for the 3 libraries mentioned. I set SDL_VIDEODRIVER to each of the libraries in turn and tried to run a simple SDL application from the console (outside of X Windows). Even tried rebuilding an application after I rebuilt the SDL library. No luck. No video comes up.
Is it possible to run SDL outside of X on this machine? Do I have to do anything special like rebuild my FreeBSD kernel and change kernel settings? Am I missing some other environment settings besides SDL_VIDEODRIVER that I need to supply to get this working? Is there any documentation somewhere that details how to set up SDL to work with alternative drivers like these?
I’m stuck at this point. Is there a way to proceed further or will this simply not work on my current computer? Any help to get this functioning is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
You could use Vesa. Or you could use Qt Extended (Qt w/o Xorg), but I have
no idea how to use Qt Extended (now Qtopia, I think). I’ve never been in
your situation so I don’t know much other than hearsay, and that’s what I’ve
heard said.
Hopefully somebody with a little more knowledge can help you out.On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 1:51 PM, LM wrote:
I’m trying to get as many applications as I can running on my machine
without X Windows, since it’s an old machine without a lot of memory and
runs most X applications very, very slowly. I currently have FreeBSD
Release 7.2 on the machine. I would really like to find a way to get SDL
applications to run in a standard screen without X having to be started (or
even on the machine). If it helps any, my computer is a Sony PCG-F540
laptop and when X is on it, it uses the neomagic video driver. I’ve also
been able to get zgv using libsvga to display graphics.
So far, I’ve tried rebuilding SDL from scratch. I tried including as many
alternative video libraries as I could find package downloads for at the
FreeBSD site. I used DirectFB, libsvga and vgl. I also have libraries
downloaded for GGI, but would have to build them to test further. Nano-X
might be another option, but again, would have to see if I could get that to
build first. I compiled SDL and made sure it included support for the 3
libraries mentioned. I set SDL_VIDEODRIVER to each of the libraries in turn
and tried to run a simple SDL application from the console (outside of X
Windows). Even tried rebuilding an application after I rebuilt the SDL
library. No luck. No video comes up.
Is it possible to run SDL outside of X on this machine? Do I have to do
anything special like rebuild my FreeBSD kernel and change kernel settings?
Am I missing some other environment settings besides SDL_VIDEODRIVER that I
need to supply to get this working? Is there any documentation somewhere
that details how to set up SDL to work with alternative drivers like these?
I’m stuck at this point. Is there a way to proceed further or will this
simply not work on my current computer? Any help to get this functioning is
greatly appreciated. Thanks.
What problems are you having? The SVGAlib support and DirectFB support
should both work… ?On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 10:51 AM, LM wrote:
I’m trying to get as many applications as I can running on my machine
without X Windows, since it’s an old machine without a lot of memory and
runs most X applications very, very slowly. I currently have FreeBSD
Release 7.2 on the machine. I would really like to find a way to get SDL
applications to run in a standard screen without X having to be started (or
even on the machine). If it helps any, my computer is a Sony PCG-F540
laptop and when X is on it, it uses the neomagic video driver. I’ve also
been able to get zgv using libsvga to display graphics.
So far, I’ve tried rebuilding SDL from scratch. I tried including as many
alternative video libraries as I could find package downloads for at the
FreeBSD site. I used DirectFB, libsvga and vgl. I also have libraries
downloaded for GGI, but would have to build them to test further. Nano-X
might be another option, but again, would have to see if I could get that to
build first. I compiled SDL and made sure it included support for the 3
libraries mentioned. I set SDL_VIDEODRIVER to each of the libraries in turn
and tried to run a simple SDL application from the console (outside of X
Windows). Even tried rebuilding an application after I rebuilt the SDL
library. No luck. No video comes up.
Is it possible to run SDL outside of X on this machine? Do I have to do
anything special like rebuild my FreeBSD kernel and change kernel settings?
Am I missing some other environment settings besides SDL_VIDEODRIVER that I
need to supply to get this working? Is there any documentation somewhere
that details how to set up SDL to work with alternative drivers like these?
I’m stuck at this point. Is there a way to proceed further or will this
simply not work on my current computer? Any help to get this functioning is
greatly appreciated. Thanks.
What problems are you having? The SVGAlib support and DirectFB support
should both work… ?
I downloaded three video library packages (directfb, libsvga, and vgl) from the FreeBSD site and installed them with pkg_add command. I set the environment variable to SDL_VIDEODRIVER=“svgalib”. I rebuilt SDL library from source and made sure it included the new video libraries. I built picaxo (a small picture viewer than uses SDL). Tried to run the picture viewer. Saw the message:
svgalib: ark: Unknown chiptype 0
The screen flashed and that was it. If I run zgv with libsvga (no SDL), it gives the same message, but brings up the picture after that. Tried a couple of other SDL applications. The screen flashed and immediately returned to command prompt. Repeated the steps for SDL_VIDEODRIVER=“directfb”. When I ran a SDL based application like picaxo, I got the following message:
(!) System/DevMem: Please supply ‘video-phys=0xXXXXXXXX’ and ‘video-length=XXXX’ options
(1) DirectFB/Core: Cold not initialize ‘system_core’ core! -> Invalid argument!
Failed to init SDL library
Tried to look at directfb documentation, but couldn’t find details on setting video settings mentioned in error message. I tried the process again with VGL and the screen showed:
Failed to init SDL library
Not sure what to try from here.
Any suggestions? Are there some other settings I need to initialize somehow before trying to run a SDL application using one of these libraries?