Some notes about Xorg 7.4, libxine and CUPS
Tags: freebsd
The last update of my local ports collection was most annoying and unnerving. Here are some notes to dodge three of the bullets.
Xorg 7.4
Either disable HAL at compile time or add the following to your xorg.conf (assuming your keyboard is configured properly etc.):
Option "AutoAddDevices" "OFF"
Else, you would have to configure your keyboard settings (such as layout, rules etc.) in some obscure HAL configuration file that is hard to find. And to be frank, I was unwilling to create some XML files in a directory pretty well hidden on my hard disk just to get my X server to accept input from German keyboards. Seriously, what is wrong with the InputDevice section in Xorg.conf?
libxine
Don’t compile it with pulseaudio support if you don’t need it. I did compile it with that option and my reward was that programs such as Xine or Amarok would hang. Using the last of their strength, they would utter cryptic messages on the command-line:
Caps.c: Dropping root privileges.
Since I did not need pulseaudio, I recompiled libxine, Xine, and Amarok and successfully resurrected them.
CUPS
Be sure to install print/gutenprint from the ports collection. Your applications and printers will thank you for it. And as a boon, you will not get any Unsupported format 'application/postscript' messages because all necessary dependencies will be available.
That’s it. FreeBSD FTW!