3. Installing MGR

The latest source distribution can be FTPed from the directories ftp://bugs.nosc.mil/pub/Mgr/65 and ftp://archimedes.nosc.mil/pub/Mgr/65. One used to be able to find older MGR sources at ftp://ftp.thp.uni-koeln.de/pub/linux/mgr, or alternatively on ftp://134.95.80.1/pub/thp/linux/mgr, but these may be gone. Even older versions of this distribution from Haardt can be found on tsx-11.mit.edu and elsewhere. Pre-Linux versions of MGR from Uhler and others can be found at ftp://bellcore.com/pub/mgr, although no one seems to maintain things there. MGR has been through a lot of versions and releases, but the current *Linux* version number is 0.65. This version number ought to arrive at 1.0 when stable 256-color VGA code for Linux appears. RCS version numbers have increased from Bellcore's 4.3 up to our 4.12 now.

Required tools to build this distribution of MGR are m4 (GNU, or perhaps another supporting the -D option), make (GNU, or perhaps another supporting include) and *roff for the docs. Also sh, awk, and POSIX install. Binary distributions have not been assembled yet, so you need an ANSI C compiler environment, e.g. gcc.

A Linux installation requires Linux 0.99.10 or better, an HGC, EGA, VGA, or SVGA graphics card, and a mouse. Mouses supported are: serial Microsoft mouse, serial MouseSystems 3 and 5 byte mouse, serial MMSeries mouse, serial Logitech mouse, PS/2 mouse, or a bus mouse. The VGA 640x480 monochrome graphics mode is supported out of the box, as is 640x350 and 640x200. To run 800x600, or other modes that your BIOS can initialize and which do not require bank-switching, you need to run a small program (supplied as src/vgamisc/regs.exe) under DOS to read the VGA registers and write a header file which you place in the directory src/libbitblit/linux, so that it can be included by the vga.c file there. Some VGA cards can use 128k windows, and these can run higher monochrome resolutions.

The Linux-colorport code also runs in the standard 320x200x256 color VGA mode without difficulty, because no bank switching is required. Non-fast, but simple, bank-switching code has been added in version 0.65, and it works with a Tseng ET4000 card in 640x480x256 and 800x600x256 modes. The S3 code does not work in super VGA resolutions, yet. Supporting new super VGA cards requires writing one function to switch banks and making sure that the desired screen mode can be initialized from a register dump, possibly with hand-tweaking. The Linux color servers generally mangle the screen fonts, necessitating use of restorefont as in runx.

Suns with SunOS 4.1.2 and bwtwo, cgthree, or cgsix frame buffers are supported. Coherent installations should refer to the README.Coh file in the source distribution. Porting the latest-and-greatest MGR to another POSIX-like system which provides select() and pty's and direct access to a bitmapped frame-buffer ought to be straightforward, just implementing the libbitblit library based on the sunmono or colorport code, say.

If you want to install everything, you need 5 MB disk space for binaries, fonts, manual pages etc. The sources are about 2 MB, plus object files during compilation.

Normally, /usr/mgr should be either the directory or a link to the directory where you install MGR stuff for runtime use. Typing

chdir /usr/mgr; gunzip < whereveryouputit/mgrusr.tgz | tar xvf -

chdir /usr/mgr; gunzip < wherever/morefonts.tgz | tar xvf -

chdir /usr/src/local/mgr; gunzip < wherever/mgrsrc.tgz | tar xvf -

The source tree can be compiled from one top-level Makefile which invokes lower-level Makefiles, all of which "include" a "Configfile" at the top level. The Configfile is created by an interactive sh script named Configure, which runs m4 on a Configfile.m4. So you do something like this:

chdir /usr/src/local/mgr
sh ./Configure
make first
make depend
make install
make clean

It might be wise, before running make, to eyeball the Configfile generated by the Configure script, checking that it looks reasonable. (At least one m4 poops out (Sun /usr/bin/m4), creating a very short Configfile. If this happens, try editing a copy of Configfile.sun or Configfile.lx) Several flags in MGRFLAGS can be added/omitted to change some optional features in the server, viz:

-DWHO

muck utmp file so "who" works

-DVI

code for clicking the mouse in vi moving the cursor

-DDEBUG

enable debugging output selectable with -d options.

-DFASTMOUSE

XOR the mouse track

-DBUCKEY

for hot-key server commands without mousing

-DPRIORITY

for priority window scheduling instead of round-robin; the active window gets higher priority

-DCUT

for cut/paste between windows and a global snarf buffer

-DALIGN

forces window alignment for fast scrolling (monochr)

-DKILL

kills windows upon tty i/o errors

-DSHRINK

use only some of the screen ($MGRSIZE in environment)

-DNOSTACK

don't permit event stacking

-DBELL

really ring the bell

-DKBD

read mgr input from the sun kbd, instead of stdin. This permits redirection of console msgs to a window.

-DFRACCHAR

fractional character movement for proportional fonts

-DXMENU

extended menu stuff (experimental)

-DMOVIE

movie making extension which logs all operations to a file for later replay -- not quite working under Linux

-DEMUMIDMSBUT

Emulate a missing middle mouse button by chording

The BITBLITFLAGS macro should contain -DBANKED if you're trying out the super VGA color.

If a make complains about the lack of a default_font.h or an icon_server.h in the directory src/mgr, it means that you forgot to do this

make depend

Not all the clients are compiled and installed by the Makefiles. Clients found under src/clients having capitalized names or not compiled by the supplied Makefiles may have problems compiling and/or running, but they may be interesting to hack on. Most of the screen drivers found under the libbitblit directory are of mainly archeological interest. Grave robbing can be profitable.

At some point check that your /etc/termcap and/or terminfo file contain entries for MGR terminals such as found in the misc directory. If all your software checks $TERMCAP in the environment, this is not needed, as long as you run set_termcap in each window.

MGR works better if run setuid root, because it wants to chown ptys and write in the utmp file. This helps the ify iconifier client work better and the event passing mechanism be more secure. On Linux, root permissions are required in order to do in/out on the screen device. Otherwise, you decide whether to trust it.

In versions around 0.62 there are troubles on the Sun with using the csh as the default shell. Programs seem to run in a different process group than the foreground process group of the window's pty. There is no trouble with bash, sh, or rc. Ideas why?