POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.unix : Linux framebuffer patch version 0.7.1 released Server Time
23 Dec 2024 22:09:11 EST (-0500)
  Linux framebuffer patch version 0.7.1 released (Message 1 to 1 of 1)  
From: Nicolas Calimet
Subject: Linux framebuffer patch version 0.7.1 released
Date: 9 Jan 2006 14:54:11
Message: <43c2bf63$1@news.povray.org>
Version 0.7.1 of the Linux framebuffer patch to povray-3.6.1 for Unix
is available for download here:

http://pov4grasp.free.fr/download/povray-3.6.1-fb-0.7.1.diff.bz2 (20 KB)

	This is a bugfix release, no new feature is added.
	List of changes from version 0.7.0:

- fix possible build error with <linux/keyboard.h> (workaround)
- fix possible mouse init failure due to tty access (libgpm workaround)
- fix handling of bad/ignored mouse connection not notified to libgpm
- fix mouse cursor for truecolor visual (but cannot match console colors)
- fix mouse cursor size to always match the console font size
- fix mouse cursor to never leave the visible screen
- fix display trashed by late render message (but outdated screen buffer)
- fix dumb screen clearing (paste the screen buffer: may leave artefacts)
- fix several warnings to output the relevant errno message string
- fix unexpected colormap warning for truecolor visual
- fix stderr messages to clear the whole line and not only 79 chars
- fix command-line options parsing for better consistency


	A generic linux povray binary is also available here:

http://pov4grasp.free.fr/download/povray-nc-0007.bz2 (2.0 MB)

Download the file, unpack it with 'bunzip2 povray-nc-0007.bz2' and set its
executable permission with 'chmod +x povray-nc-0007'.

The binary includes the unix frontend patch described in this thread:
http://news.povray.org/43b55aa4$1@news.povray.org
It has support for the X Window display but comes without SVGAlib display.
The binary was compiled with the Intel C++ compiler to take advantage of
Pentium 4 optimizations.  It should however work on any other platform
as well.


	Release notes:

This maintenance release fixes mostly bugs introduced in the previous version;
many concern the mouse support.  In particular, the mouse cursor should now
look right in most situations, for instance when the console size doesn't match
the screen size.  (For truecolor visual however, the cursor color cannot match
the console color unlike paletted modes, i.e. pseudocolor/directcolor visuals.)
This release also tries to cope better with a console that uses an arbitrary
background image, as discussed in a previous thread.  See the sample image in
p.b.i (same subject).

One important note concerns the connection to the gpm mouse server.  While this
release tries to work around some limitations of gpm/libgpm, there is a high
chance that the connection to the mouse server will fail if you run povray as
non-priviledged user.  This is unfortunate since everything else works* with
no need to be logged as root or to set povray suid root.  Nevertheless, it is
possible to make this patch work for a non-root user provided the current
terminal device is owned by the user.  With current Linux distributions, this
will normally never happen, and the connection to gpm will fail.  Therefore,
for user  johndoe  the root must do the following before the user logs in:

chown johndoe /dev/tty1 (or /dev/vc/1)

johndoe will then be able to connect to the mouse server from the first terminal
and only that one.  In the future I may provide a patch to gpm to overcome this
limitation.


(*) The framebuffer must of course have read/write permissions.  For non-root
users, it is usually required to list them in the appropriate group (e.g. the
"video" group) so that they can access the /dev/fb/0 or /dev/fb0 device.
For instance, as root:

usermod -G video johndoe

will add johndoe to the list of users who are permitted to access all devices
owned by the video group (see the /etc/group file).



	Installation instructions for the source patch:

1) copy the file linked above to the parent directory of the povray-3.6.1/
    directory (source distribution only).  The povray source distro that you
    intend to patch should be the official release.

2) IMPORTANT: if you already applied a previous version of this patch,
    you must unpatch first the povray sources with the *old* patch, e.g.

% bzcat povray-3.6.1-fb-0.7.0.diff.bz2 | patch -p0 -f -R

3) patch the povray-3.6.1/ sources:

% bzcat povray-3.6.1-fb-0.7.1.diff.bz2 | patch -p0 -f

    and ignore the possible warnings (in principle they are harmless).

4) cd to povray-3.6.1/ and run the ./bootstrap script.  This requires
    having the GNU autotools installed, i.e. autoconf and automake.

5) run './configure && make check' as usual.


	- NC


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