How do I get GNOME &gnomever; for FreeBSD?
There are two ways to install GNOME &gnomever; on FreeBSD. One way is to use packages, and the other way is to use ports. Before doing either installation, you should first familiarize yourself with the GNOME &gnomever; release notes.
Install GNOME &gnomever; from packages.
To install GNOME &gnomever; from packages, use the command:
# pkg_add -r gnome2This will download the latest GNOME &gnomever; packages from the FreeBSD FTP site, and proceed to install them on your system.
Up-to-date GNOME packages for i386 and amd64 for all supported versions of FreeBSD are also available from the GNOME Tinderbox.
To build and install GNOME &gnomever; from ports, you should first cvsup the latest ports tree. Then:
# cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome2 # make clean # make install clean
Enable File Alteration Monitor (FAM) support for your &gnomever; desktop.
GNOME includes support for the File Alteration Monitor (devel/fam) by default, in order to improve the GNOME desktop's ability to respond to files being added, deleted, or modified by other programs. To take advantage of this functionality, FAM must be enabled in inetd.conf(5). More information can be found in ports/devel/fam/pkg-message.
Make GNOME &gnomever; start when X starts.
Once you have the GNOME &gnomever; desktop installed, GNOME &gnomever; can be started by adding the following line to ~/.xsession or ~/.xinitrc, as appropriate:
exec gnome-session
GNOME &gnomever; is failing to build from ports. What do I do?
The majority of GNOME &gnomever; compilation problems can be solved by making sure all the necessary GNOME &gnomever; components are up-to-date.
Updating solves most problems
If you have not yet followed FAQ #6, do so, as it will most likely fix the problem you are reading this document to solve.
Please follow FAQ #6. If you have not done so, and you ask for help, you will be told to follow FAQ #6.
In general, when a GNOME &gnomever; component is not up-to-date, you will see an error similar to the following:
checking for libgnomeui-2.0 libbonoboui-2.0 libbonobo-2.0 >= 2.2.1 gnome-vfs-2.0 libgnomeprint-2.2 >= 2.3.0 libgnomeprintui-2.2 libglade-2.0... configure: error: Library requirements (libgnomeui-2.0 libbonoboui-2.0 libbonobo-2.0 >= 2.2.1 gnome-vfs-2.0 libgnomeprint-2.2 >= 2.3.0 libgnomeprintui-2.2 libglade-2.0) not met; consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if your libraries are in a nonstandard prefix so pkg-config can find them.
Simply keeping your ports tree up-to-date will prevent these errors.
If the pkg-config program is out-of-date, you may see a configure error similar to the following:
configure: error: *** pkg-config too old; version 0.14 or better required.
While this may be buried in some other text, the error is very straight-forward: you need to upgrade pkg-config. The pkg-config application is found in the devel/pkgconfig port. By updating this port to the latest version, this error will go away.
You may see compiler errors relating to pthreads (&posix; threads), such as:
undefined reference to 'strerror_r'
To fix thread related errors, make sure you have the following compiled into your kernel:
options _KPOSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING
If you are tracking -stable or -current, make sure that you do not have NOLIBC_R set in /etc/make.conf. If you do, remove it, then rebuild world. If you still have trouble, please send email to &email;@FreeBSD.org with the output of the failed compilation. It is also helpful to include the config.log from the port's work directory.
Prevent two versions of the same library.
A common source of build failures is the existence of multiple versions of the same library. This can happen if you have two different versions of a port installed, or can even happen through normal portupgrade use. You can back up the libraries in /usr/local/lib/compat/pkg and remove them, and then run portupgrade -u -rf pkgconfig. This will force a rebuild of all GNOME-related apps (and a fair number of other apps) without retaining old versions of libraries in /usr/local/lib/compat/pkg.
I installed GNOME &gnomever;, but I am missing application foo. What gives?
Only the core desktop is included in the gnome2 package. Here are some other GNOME meta-ports that offer convenient groupings of popular GNOME 2 software.
To install any of these from packages:
# pkg_add -r meta-port
For example, to install the GNOME 2 Fifth Toe from packages:
# pkg_add -r gnome2-fifth-toe
To install any of these from ports:
# cd /usr/ports/category/meta-port # make clean # make install clean
For example, to install the GNOME 2 Fifth Toe from ports:
# cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome2-fifth-toe # make clean # make install clean
What is the best way to upgrade from GNOME 1.4 to GNOME 2?
If you have GNOME 1.4, and you want to upgrade to GNOME &gnomever;, first familiarize yourself with the official upgrade instructions from the GNOME site. Make sure your GNOME 1.4 ports are up-to-date, and then remove the following GNOME 1.4 packages from the system:
gnomecore sawfish gnomeapplets gnomemedia gtop libgtop nautilus gedit xalf bugbuddy gnomeaudio gnomegames gnomeutils gdm eog ggv
After those packages are removed, you can build GNOME &gnomever; as per the instructions listed above.
What is the best way to upgrade from GNOME &gnomeoldver; to GNOME &gnomever;?
The &gnomeoldver; to &gnomever; process is trickier than the 2.4 to &gnomeoldver; process. You are strongly advised to read the upgrade FAQ for detailed instructions.
How do I keep my GNOME &gnomever; components and applications up-to-date?
You are emphatically encouraged to use portupgrade -- and only portupgrade -- to keep your GNOME &gnomever; components and applications up-to-date.
Update your ports with portupgrade.
Once you have updated your ports tree (presumably with cvsup), the following two simple commands will update what needs to be updated, and will prevent inconsistencies:
# pkgdb -F # portupgrade -a
Start from scratch.
Despite consistent utilization of portupgrade, if it seems like everything is refusing to build with everything else, you might save yourself a headache or three by removing all your GNOME apps and reinstalling them (your data files will remain untouched). To do this, follow these commands:
# pkgdb -F # pkg_delete -rf pkgconfig\* # cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome2 # make clean # make install clean
After running the above commands, you will have to reinstall all the GNOME applications you desire. This process sounds painful, but it is actually a great way to clear cruft off of your system. Just install applications as you need them, and you will be surprised how much disk space you have reclaimed. A full rebuild does take a significant amount of time; fortunately, this measure is only rarely needed.
Can I install GNOME 1.4 applications under GNOME &gnomever;?
GNOME 1.4 ports will run well under the GNOME 2 desktop. Older applications that were incompatible with the GNOME 2 desktop have been removed from the ports tree, so it should be safe to run any GNOME application in the ports tree under the GNOME 2 desktop.
Where can I get more themes for GNOME &gnomever;?
On the following websites, you can find themes for GTK+-1/2, metacity, sawfish, nautilus, GDM, icon themes, backgrounds, and more:
Some of these themes have already been ported to FreeBSD. Check out the x11-themes/gnome-icons and x11-themes/metacity-themes meta-ports for a nice sample.
What window managers work well with GNOME &gnomever;?
The gnome2 meta-port installs the metacity window manager by default. Another popular window manager that works well with GNOME &gnomever; is sawfish. Sawfish can be found in x11-wm/sawfish2.
To switch between metacity and sawfish in GNOME 2, you will need to do the following:
# killall metacity; sawfish & # gnome-session-save --gui
The gnome-session-save is important. Without it, the window manager will revert back to the one previously configured upon next login. To switch back, simply reverse sawfish and metacity.
If you have gotten the GNOME &gnomever; desktop working under an alternative window manager, please take a screenshot and send it to us!
Does GNOME &gnomever; support anti-aliased fonts?
Yes! Anti-aliasing requires XFree86 4.x or X.Org with freetype2 support. To add freetype2 support to X, make sure you have the following modules loaded in your XF86Config or xorg.conf file under the Modules section:
Load "freetype" Load "type1"
Then, simply check out the Fonts capplet under Applications->Desktop Preferences. If you want a good set of TrueType starter fonts, install the x11-fonts/webfonts port.
Sometimes, after adding new fonts to the system, it is necessary to teach fontconfig about them. If you find that newly added fonts are not made available even after restarting GNOME 2, run the following command as root:
# fc-cache -f -v
If you have any questions, please send them to &email;@FreeBSD.org.
How can I control what fonts are anti-aliased?
GNOME &gnomever; makes use of libXft and fontconfig to handle anti-aliasing. Fontconfig is a very powerful XML-based font configuration package. You can create a ~/.fonts.conf file that controls virtually every aspect of fontconfig. For example, if you do not want to anti-alias fonts smaller than 16 point, create a ~/.fonts.conf with the following contents:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target="font">
<test name="size" compare="less_eq">
<double>16</double>
</test>
<edit name="antialias" mode="assign">
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<test name="pixelsize" compare="less_eq">
<double>16</double>
</test>
<edit name="antialias" mode="assign">
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>
Refer to fonts-conf(5) for more information.
How do I edit my GNOME 2 menus?
There is no way to add, edit, or rename GNOME menu items in GNOME &gnomever; aside from manually editing the .desktop files themselves. However, deskutils/gnome-menu-editor can be used to deactivate items already in your Applications menu.
Enhanced menu editing is currently planned for GNOME 2.12.
How do I use GTK+ 2 resource settings for GTK+ 2 applications when not in a GNOME environment?
GNOME 2 applications get their GTK+ 2 resources from themes and the corresponding theme engine. If you would rather run your GTK+ 2 applications in a non-GNOME environment then you will need to create a file named ~/.gtkrc-2.0.
To use the widgets from a GTK+ 2 theme when in a non-GNOME environment, simply include the theme's gtk-2.0/gtkrc in your ~/.gtkrc-2.0. For example:
include "/usr/X11R6/share/themes/Crux/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"
If you prefer, you can use the same GTK+ 1.2 theme for both GTK+ 1.2 and GTK+ 2 applications, which will give your GTK+ programs a consistent look. For the most part, you can transfer your settings from your ~/.gtkrc file (used for GTK+ 1.2) with a couple of caveats.
gtk-font-name = "Verdana 11"
Note that while a GTK+ 1.2 gtkrc file will work in a GTK+ 2 gtkrc-2.0 file, the opposite is not true: the contents of a GTK+ 2 gtkrc-2.0 file will not work inside a GTK+ 1.2 gtkrc file.
For simply switching GTK+ themes without needing to edit your ~/.gtkrc files, you can use the x11/gtk-theme-switch and x11/gtk2-theme-switch ports.
How do I configure settings for GNOME 1.4 applications under GNOME &gnomever;?
Install sysutils/gnomecontrolcenter, then invoke gnomecc from the command line to bring up the GNOME 1.4 control center.
Nautilus-cd-burner does not let me burn CDs or Totem/Goobox/Sound-juicer cannot find my CD/DVD drive. How can I fix this?
Nautilus-cd-burner, totem, goobox, and sound-juicer cannot use CD/DVD drives unless support for those devices is enabled in the kernel, and the permissions on the device nodes allow write access. Nautilus-cd-burner, totem, goobox, and sound-juicer talk to CD/DVD drives through the SCSI CAM subsystem. Therefore, you must make sure you have the following configured in your kernel:
device scbus device cd device pass
You must also make sure you have the following configured in your kernel if you are using an ATAPI CD/DVD drive:
device atapicam
To figure out which CD/DVD drive you will be using, run the following command as root:
# camcontrol devlist
Your output will look similar to the following:
<QSI CDRW/DVD SBW-242 UD22> at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (cd0,pass0)
The devices in parentheses at the end are important. You must make sure the /dev entries for those devices are writable by the users that will be using nautilus-cd-burner, totem, goobox, or sound-juicer. In addition to those devices, /dev/xpt* must also be writable to your nautilus-cd-burner, totem, goobox, and sound-juicer users. The following /etc/devfs.conf configuration will achieve the desired results given the above devlist (NB: devfs.conf is only supported on FreeBSD 5.X):
perm cd0 0666 perm xpt0 0666 perm pass0 0666
On FreeBSD 4.X, you can simply set the device node permissions, and they will be preserved across reboots. Note that you must use the 'c' device nodes on FreeBSD 4.X (e.g. cd0c).
How do I add new GDM sessions?
The process for adding new GDM sessions has changed substantially between GNOME 2.2 and &gnomever;. In order to add new sessions now, you must create a .desktop file containing the session configuration information. Session files live in /usr/X11R6/etc/dm/Sessions. For example, to add a KDE session, create a file in /usr/X11R6/etc/dm/Sessions called kde.desktop. That file should contain the following:
[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=KDE Comment=This session logs you into KDE Exec=/usr/local/bin/startkde TryExec=/usr/local/bin/startkde Icon= Type=Application
This file must have execute permissions. For example:
# chmod 0555 kde.desktop
After creating this file, restart GDM, and there will be a KDE link under the Sessions menu.
How do I disable spatial Nautilus?
As of GNOME &gnomever;, Nautilus operates in what is known as a "spatial" mode. This means that each item is opened in a new window. This may not be desirable to all users. If you wish to revert back to the old Nautilus file system browser, go to Desktop->Preferences->File Management, click on the Behavior tab, and check the "Always open in browser windows" checkbox.
How do I disable desktop icons for "Computer," "Home," and "Trash?"
If you do not want your desktop cluttered with the default icons for "Computer," "Home," and "Trash," you can disable any or all of them. To do this, launch Applications > System Tools > Configuration Editor, and go to the /apps/nautilus/desktop key. From here, you can enable or disable the icons, and even rename "Home" and "Trash."
How do I mount my removable media in Nautilus?
In order for removable volumes (e.g. CD-ROMs, floppy drives, etc.) to be visible in Nautilus, you must first set the vfs.usermount sysctl to 1. To do that, add the following to /etc/sysctl.conf then reboot:
vfs.usermount=1
Next, each user mountpoint must be added to /etc/fstab. For example, if user marcus wants to be able to mount a CD under /home/marcus/cdrom, the following must be in /etc/fstab:
/dev/acd0 /home/marcus/cdrom cd9660 ro,noauto 0 0
Each additional user would require a similar entry. Note: the user must own the mountpoint, and have write access to the device node in question. In the example above, /home/marcus/cdrom must be owned by the user marcus, and marcus must have write access to the /dev/acd0 node. Once all of that is setup, a CD-ROM icon will appear under the Computer location in Nautilus. Double-clicking on that icon will mount the CD, and place an icon on the desktop.
Another important caveat with removable media mounting to keep in mind is that mount points must be specified with fully-qualified path names in /etc/fstab. For example, if /home is a symlink to /usr/home, you must specify /usr/home/marcus/cdrom in the example above. If you do not do this, you will ecnounter strange problems trying to access or unmount your volume.
Gary Dunn also provides a very detailed how-to for user-mounting SMB volumes.
Why is GNOME so slow to start up?
Under normal circumstances, GNOME should only take a few seconds to start up (fifteen at most). However, certain configurations may cause it to hang for up to an hour at login time.
First, make sure your machine's hostname properly resolves. To test this, run the following command:
ping `hostname`
If the command fails, you will either have to add your fully-qualified hostname to DNS or to /etc/hosts. If you do not have a static IP address, you can append your hostname to the localhost line in /etc/hosts. For example, if your machine's hostname is gnome-rocks.mydomain.com, edit /etc/hosts, and change the line:
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.my.domain
To:
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.my.domain gnome-rocks gnome-rocks.mydomain.com
Once hostname resolution is working, you must make sure FAM is properly configured. Since GNOME &gnomever;, FAM support is enabled in gnomevfs2 by default. This causes applications such as Nautilus to attempt a connection to 127.0.0.1:111 on start up. To configure FAM, read the pkg-message in /usr/ports/devel/fam. If you do not wish to use FAM, uninstall the devel/fam port, then add the following to /etc/make.conf and rebuild the devel/gnomevfs2 port:
WITHOUT_FAM=yes
Finally, if you have either the TCP or UDP blackhole sysctl enabled, this may cause GNOME to stall on login. If, after fixing hostname resolution and configuring FAM, GNOME still takes a long time to startup, verify the following sysctls are set to 0:
net.inet.tcp.blackhole net.inet.udp.blackhole
How do I install GNOME packages from the GNOME Tinderbox?
The GNOME Tinderbox is a service that continually builds i386 and amd64 + href="http://www.marcuscom.com/tinderbox-amd64/">amd64 packages of the GNOME desktop for all supported versions of FreeBSD. As hardware gets better, more meta-ports may be added in the future. This service can be a great way of getting the latest GNOME desktop without having to wait for everything to build from ports.
To install packages from the GNOME Tinderbox, you must set the PACKAGESITE environment variable to the correct package directory. The package directory can be found by clicking on the Package Directory link on the main Tinderbox page for your architecture. Once you have the correct package directory, you should append /Latest/ to it so you can pkg_add gnome2 without knowing any additional version numbers. For example, if you are installing on i386 FreeBSD 5.4, set PACKAGESITE to the following:
http://www.marcuscom.com/tb/packages/5.4-FreeBSD/Latest/
If you are installing on amd64 FreeBSD 5.4, set PACKAGESITE to the following:
http://www.marcuscom.com/tb/packages-amd64/5.4-FreeBSD/Latest/
If you are installing on FreeBSD -STABLE, -CURRENT, or any release after 4.9 or 5.2, then you can simply follow the instructions on installing GNOME from packages. However, if you are installing on FreeBSD 4.9 or 5.2.1, you must first install the sysutils/pkg_install port or package, then use the following command to install GNOME from packages:
/usr/local/sbin/pkg_add -r gnome2
Ade Lovett (ade) offers periodically built amd64 package sets for all the GNOME 2 meta-ports on his package building server.
How do I add new MIME types to GNOME?
Since GNOME &gnomever;, MIME types are stored in the new FreeDesktop shared-mime-info database. However, gnome-control-center has not been updated to allow one to easily add MIME types to this database. Therefore, if applications such as Nautilus complain that there is no MIME type associated with a particular file, using the Open With tab under Properties not work.
New MIME types can be added in one of two places. They can either be added system-wide for all users, or added locally on a per-user basis. System-wide MIME types must be added to either ${LOCALBASE}/share/mime or ${X11BASE}/share/mime, where as local MIME types must be added to ~/.local/share/mime. In both cases, the procedure is the same.
To define a new MIME type, you must create an application and a packages file to describe it. The application file will be named for the MIME type, and contain its name and a brief comment describing it. The packages file will list all the extensions associated with this MIME type as well as any special file magic that can be used to identify files without an extension.
For example, if we wanted to add a new local MIME type for Windows HTML Help files (i.e. .chm files) called application/x-chm, we would do the following. First, we would create the directories ~/.local/share/mime/application and ~/.local/share/mime/packages if they did not already exist. Then, we create an application file called x-chm.xml that we will place in ~/.local/share/mime/application. The file looks like:
<xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <mime-type xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info" type="application/x-chm"> <comment>Windows HTML Help file</comment> </mime-type>
Next, we create a packages file called chm.xml that we will place in ~/.local/share/mime/packages. The file looks like:
<xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mime-info
xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info">
<mime-type type="application/x-chm">
<comment>Windows HTML Help file</comment>
<glob pattern="*.chm" />
</mime-type>
</mime-info>
Once the files have been created, the MIME database must be updated. To do that, run the command:
% update-mime-database ~/.local/share/mime
Finally (and unfortunately), you must logout and log back in to GNOME for the changes to fully take effect. Nautilus' Properties->Open With interface can now be used to associate an application to this MIME type. Hopefully all of this will be made much easier in a future GNOME release.
How do I configure GDM for automatic logins?
The GNOME Display Manager (GDM) can be configured to automatically log a user in when it starts up. To do that, you must first configure Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) support for gdm-autologin. On 5.X, create a /etc/pam.d/gdm-autologin file with the following contents:
auth required pam_nologin.so auth required pam_permit.so account required pam_unix.so session required pam_permit.so
On 4.X, add the following to /etc/pam.conf:
gdm-autologin auth required pam_permit.so gdm-autologin account required pam_unix.so gdm-autologin session required pam_permit.so
Once PAM is configured to allow GDM automatic logins, edit /usr/X11R6/etc/gdm/gdm.conf, and set AutomaticLoginEnable=true, and AutomaticLogin equal to the username for which you wish to enable automatic logins. For example:
AutomaticLoginEnable=true AutomaticLogin=marcus
That will automatically login the user marcus as soon as GDM launches.
How do I upgrade from gnome2-lite to the full GNOME &gnomever; desktop?
The Lite edition does not include all of the components of the standard GNOME &gnomever; desktop. If you wish to install the full desktop, first remove the gnome2-lite package, then install the gnome2 port or package. For example:
# pkg_delete gnome2-lite
Then one of the following:
# cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome2 # make install clean
or:
# pkg_add -r gnome2
Alternatively, you can install additional GNOME components individually using either their ports or packages.