*BSD News Article 29279


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!news.csuohio.edu!stever
From: stever@csuohio.edu (Steve Ratliff)
Subject: Re: X-Win & Memory req's
Message-ID: <1994Apr6.215052.4768@news.csuohio.edu>
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Organization: Cleveland State University
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References: <2nuivr$fvt@dmsoproto.ida.org>
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 1994 21:50:52 GMT
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Dean Thomas (dcthomas@ida.org) wrote:
: 
: Hello everyone,
: 
: I'm a newcomer to FreeBSD & XFree86.  I recently installed them on my
: 486/33 with 8 Meg of RAM and a 270 Meg FreeBSD partition on my harddrive.
:  I installed the system using the Walnut Creek CDROM, and used the
: default options for everything.   
: 
	8 Meg is fine for XFree.  The keyboard hanging problem is most
likely either due to a bug in pccons or to a conflict between getty and
XFree86 over controling the keyboard.  I would suggest that you compile
up a Syscons kernel and modify your /etc/ttys file to use only the
ttyv0* entries for getty's and be sure to leave one vty open without a
getty on it for XFree86's use.  Also, do you have sufficient swap space?
XFree really eats up the VM space quickly.  I would suggest that your
swap should be at least 12-16Mb in size to prevent running out.  Running
out of swap will definately hang 1.0.
	I've also noticed from time to time that the shift, ctrl, and
alt keys sometimes stick with XFree.  If you tap the shift or capslock
key it should reset it to normal.

: With only a few days of operating experience, the FreeBSD system seems
: fairly stable.  However, when I run X-windows the system frequently locks
: up.  The symptoms include:
:         -- the keyboard locks up
:         -- all keystrokes are uppercase 
:            (No, I don't have Caplock pressed :^) )
:         -- twm does not allow me to switch between windows using the
: mouse.
: 
: I'm guessing that I don't have enough RAM.  Do the pro's have any
: comments?  If I need more RAM, how much do you suggest?  I'm thinking of
: upgrading to 20 Meg, but that's an expensive option.  I don't want to
: take it unless I'm fairly confident that it will solve my problems.
: 
: By the way, I read the FAQ, and it doesn't really say much other than a
: minimium system requires 2 Meg of RAM. 
: 
: Thanks in advance...Dean

--
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stever@babbage.cba.csuohio.edu		"What's better than a free OS?"
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