Installation of Gnome 1.4 on Cosmos

Installed in /usr/local. Could not find binaries for Solaris 7 anywhere so had to build whole damn thing from scratch. Found some instructions:

• clanger9.org.uk
• Local Copy

1. Downloaded and installed "GNU/Solaris" --- simple enough, most binaries available from sunfreeware.com.
2. Got source for Gnome packages from Gnome ftp site and stuck in /software/local/gnome_src_1.4, gunzipped and untared each, configure, make and make install --- ensure use GNU make and install not Solaris (GNU: /usr/local/bin; Solaris: /usr/ccs/bin). Most packages worked fine. Problems and work-arounds noted below.

Then needed to resolve some permissions problems --- see bottom for how this was done.

Individual Packages

gnome-libs

Couple of problems with this:

First problem, during make, creating po/zh_TW.Big5.mo from zh_TW.Big5.gmo.
Since this seems to be something to do with support for Chinese I simply
copied the latter to the former in order to lie to make and carried on.

    ...in fact saw this problem repeatedly with different packages, worked
       around same way in each case...

Second, problem related to db-3.2.9:  I could not find this version in
binary for Solaris 7 (only 8) so got a newer version.  gnome-libs seemed
to configure ok (found db185_open, did not find dbopen) but make/compilation
complained dbopen was missing!  

Eventually found db-3.2.9 source as a zip file from somewhere or other.
All ascii files in here, including configure scripts and C source turned out
to be DOS ascii files and this caused havoc.  

Finally at http://www.sleepycat.com/:  went to the download page and  
followed the link (Berkeley DB Patches and Change Logs) to old versions and
found both .zip and .tar.gz versions of 3.2.9 which compiled and installed
like a dream (cd build_unix;  ../dist/configure --enable-compat185 
--enable-shared --prefix=/usr/local;  make;  make install) and then, from
a fresh untar/ungzip of gnome-lib, ./configure, make and make install
worked like a dream.

Get the right version of db!

libgtop

  checking for GLIB - version >= 1.2.0... 
  *** 'glib-config --version' returned 1.2.9, but GLIB (1.2.10)
  *** was found! If glib-config was correct, then it is best
  *** to remove the old version of GLIB. You may also be able to fix the error
  *** by modifying your LD_LIBRARY_PATH enviroment variable, or by editing
  *** /etc/ld.so.conf. Make sure you have run ldconfig if that is
  *** required on your system.
  *** If glib-config was wrong, set the environment variable GLIB_CONFIG
  *** to point to the correct copy of glib-config, and remove the file config.cache
  *** before re-running configure

and 

  echo LD_LIBRARY_PATH
  /software/gnome/lib:/usr/local/lib

Aha!  The first bit is from an "old" installation of Ximian.  Get rid of that
and we are away!

oaf

oaf-0.6.5 configured fine but on make:
 
  /usr/share/bison/bison.simple:45: parse error
  make[2]: *** [ac-query-parse.o] Error 1
  make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/oaf-0.6.5/oafd' 

Found similar on google which suggested 0.6.10 which fixes the problem.

control-centre

had exactly the problem mentioned --- oaf had been forgotten so got unknown
symbol type errors.  Did:

  export LIBS=-loaf
  ./configure
  make

and all was well.

Permissions Problems

chmod 755 /usr/local/etc/CORBA
chmod 755 /usr/local/etc/CORBA/servers

 --- found from truss geyes_applet as mpciish2 vs root (EACCES again...);


chmod 755 /usr/local/share/applets
chmod 755 /usr/local/share/applets/*

 -- found from truss of panel as mpciish2 
        (open64("/usr/local/share/applets", O_RDONLY|O_NDELAY) Err#13 EACCES)

Where are the Sawfish menus? How do I customise it?

 -- according to web searches there should be a sawfish-ui gizmo;
 -- also, centre button should produce the menu...

 -- after re-installing sawfish 0.38 sawfish-ui appeared in /usr/local/bin
    (dunno why it was not there before);

 -- but sawfish-ui complained it could not find gui/gtk --- web search said
    this was part of rep-gtk so:

        cd rep-gtk-<version>
        umask 022
        make install 

    and all was well --- restarted sawfish and menu appeared...

 -- probably all permissions again...

 -- but then again...rebuilt sawfish 0.38 again (i.e., after above re-do of
    rep-gtk with umask of 022) and got many fewer warnings this time about
    undeclared things...also, paid better attention to workarounds to bodge
    anything necessary (e.g., makeinfo, so "po" things --- see above)...to
    ensure the "make" was ok and the "make install" fine too...

 -- restart and hurrah!!!!!!!!!!

gedit: why can't I open existing files?

 -- whenever try to open existing files as a user other than root get
    "file does not exist, create?" window...

 -- truss as normal user and as root, _after_ ensuring LD_LIBRARY_PATH and
    PATH same, and eliminating ~/.gnome*, finally spotted:

        open64("/usr/local/etc/vfs/modules", O_RDONLY|O_NDELAY) Err#13 EACCES
 
    which _succeeds_ as root at line 1200(Ish) of the truss files --- changed
    permissions and all is dandy...

panel: why can't I add launchers --- icons for them, that is?

 -- inspired by success of figuring out problem with gedit I trussed 
    /usr/local/bin/panel (not full gnome-session) and looked for EACCES
    and found could not open

        /usr/local/share/mime-info

    so, as root, chmod 755 it and all was well :-)