5. Miscellaneous

This section describes other items of note for the X11R6.8.1 release.

5.1. Legacy keyboard driver phase-out

The legacy keyboard driver is no longer compiled into the X server by default on certain platforms (including Linux). The newer kbd driver replaces the older built-in driver. It is suggested that, if the X server says that it cannot load the keyboard driver, then the xorg.conf file should be updated to use the new kbd driver, which can be done by changing the Driver line in the InputDevice section. For example,

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Keyboard0"
        Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

5.2. Socket directory ownership and permissions

The socket directories created in /tmp are now required to be owned by root and have their sticky-bit set. If the premissions are not set correctly, the component using this directory will print an error message and fail to start. Common socket directories that are known to be affected include:

/tmp/.font-unix
/tmp/.ICE-unix
/tmp/.X11-unix

There are several solutions to the problem of when to create these directories. They could be created at install time by the system's installer if the /tmp dir is persistent. They could be created at boot time by the system's boot scripts (e.g., the init.d scripts). Or, they could be created by PAM modules at service startup or user login time.

The solution chosen is platform dependent, and the system administrator should be able to handle creating those directories on any systems that do not have the correct ownership or permissions.

5.3. Composite exposes extra visuals

When the Composite extension is enabled via xorg.conf or the command line, a new visual is created. This visual is different from the other visuals used by X applications in that it includes an alpha component. It is used by the compositing manager and other Composite aware applications.

Most X applications ignore this visual since it is not useful to them; however some applications mistakenly try to use it, which will cause them to fail. An environment variable, XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS, was added to the X11 library to hide this visual from applications that mistakenly try to use it. If an application fails only when the Composite is enabled, try setting this environment variable before starting the application.

Since Composite is not enabled by default, it is not expected that this issue will be visible to most users.