Sorry for the lack of documentation on the structural underpinning of some of the newer additions under the hood. Let me try to explain it here, and then maybe this can serve as the beginnings of some documentation. Here goes...
The new Xorg Xserver has the ability to figure out (for the most part, to the extent that the driver helps in the process) the best mode for the videocard. Moreover, with the new dependency upon hal and Xrandr, it is recommended to add input devices with hal and modify video modes with Xrandr 1.2 calls. In essence, the xorg.conf becomes a place really to fix deficiencies in poorly written drivers or to force certain abnormal driver behavior in a particular environment in a way that can not be otherwise done through hal or Xrandr. To accommodate this, Xorg now understands partial xorg.conf files. Meaning you only add the sections that you need to force. Otherwise, it discovers everything. That's why you might see minimalist xorg.conf files. Now, with all that said, you have a bit of context for the new structure in LTSP. The screen-session.d/ directory (located in the chroot's /usr/share/ltsp directory) is a structure of shell scripts all of which are sourced in order (similar to Xsession.d/ or rc.d/ that you may be familiar with). These scripts are executed upon the beginning of each session but before the Xserver (if the session runs an Xserver) is launched. You can make whatever script you want that may need to run at that point. For us, one thing we use it for is to set up *how* the Xserver will be launched. This entails not just generating a xorg.conf file as needed, but also configuring the parameters that the Xserver should be launched with. The nice thing about a collection of sourced scripts is that it gives flexibility to the distribution or to the administrator to add additional scripts that may be required for that distribution or for a particular network environment that will not modify existing files (and therefore require more maintenance to care for updates in the upstream code). Let's examine the script structure: Each script is named with a prefix letter, then an order number, then a name. The prefix letter determines when the scripts of that prefix are executed and the order number determines in what order. PREFIXES: Prefixes that may be used include: S - Is a script that runs at the beginning of a session (screen script) K - Is a script that runs at the end of a session (screen script) XS - Is a script that is only run at the beginning of screen scripts that run an Xserver All of the scripts that generate a xorg.conf or modify the Xserver arguments are XS* scripts. These scripts are mostly organized by the particular lts.conf parameter or function that they affect. For example, XS85-xvideoram adds the ability to specify the X_VIDEO_RAM parameter in lts.conf and force the amount of video ram used by the driver. If you are going to create your own script, I recommend looking at other scripts to understand the structure. Since many hacks may impact the same xorg.conf sections, each section has a function of hacks assigned to it, and in your script, you would create a function and add it to the list of functions for that section. For example, if you add something to the Monitor section (that cannot already be added through existing functions) you would create a function in your script and add it to the monitor_hacks function list. Again, easier to read the code and look at examples to understand how to write a new script. Also, please note that one of the lts.conf parameters you can specify is: CONFIGURE_X_COMMAND This should be set to a path to a script. So, if you have the old configure-x.sh and like it better, simply copy it into the chroot, to say, /opt/ltsp/i386/usr/share/ltsp/configure-x.sh and then in lts.conf, specify: CONFIGURE_X_COMMAND = "/usr/share/ltsp/configure-x.sh" and you will be back to where you were. That said, I encourage you to try to move forward with us, so that everybody's job of maintaining things is made easier. There are a wealth of other things to document - such as XRANDR_MODE_0, and friends - but I suppose that is best done elsewhere. Again, sorry that the docs are lagging a bit. I hope this helps add context. And, if any of you are interested in documenting things, we would certainly welcome the help and we would gladly help proof for accuracy. Cheers, -Gadi On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 18:17 +0200, Peter Stein wrote: > Hey, > > another surprise after upgrading from LTSP Ubuntu 8.04 to 9.04: I > found the file the XServer uses is /var/run/ltsp-xorg.conf. This file > isn't generated anymore by /usr/share/ltsp/configure-x.sh. Actually > this isn't used anymore. Instead there seem to be a lot of scripts in > /usr/share/ltsp/screen-session.d. > I got no idea if they are even used or provide only some hacks if > needed. Well the question is: Which script generates (and finally > writes the ltsp-xorg.conf). I'd rather use configure-x.sh. That one > works I assume with the correct screen resolution. My ltsp-xorg.conf > is rather empty: > > > Section "Device" > Identifier "Device0" > Driver "radeon" > Endsection. > > That's it. Why was that changed. I don't get it. Unfortunately, I was > not able to find any documentation. > > Sincerely > > Peter > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > The NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanners deliver under ANY circumstances! Your > production scanning environment may not be a perfect world - but thanks to > Kodak, there's a perfect scanner to get the job done! With the NEW KODAK i700 > Series Scanner you'll get full speed at 300 dpi even with all image > processing features enabled. http://p.sf.net/sfu/kodak-com > _____________________________________________________________________ > Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss > For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net -- -------------------------------------------------------- Gideon Romm | Proud LTSP Developer l...@symbio-technologies.com Support LTSP! Buy your hardware at: www.DisklessWorkstations.com www.DisklessThinClients.com (use coupon code: LTSP5P for 5% off thin clients from DisklessThinClients.com) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanners deliver under ANY circumstances! Your production scanning environment may not be a perfect world - but thanks to Kodak, there's a perfect scanner to get the job done! With the NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanner you'll get full speed at 300 dpi even with all image processing features enabled. http://p.sf.net/sfu/kodak-com _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
