Summary: solaris 2.6 and netscape

From: Art Gwozdz (gwozdzar@bvt.gdarm.com)
Date: Tue Jul 28 1998 - 09:10:57 CDT


I'd gotten about 30 responses to my question on
netscape problems and 2.6. The same week I was getting
going on the tests for it though several things hit the
fan here and my upgrade project has been thrown into hold.

The responses that were in the majority were to:
 1. load Sun patch 105633 (latest rev mentioned was 08)
 2. change the font being displayed within netscape
 3. use the xset command
 One interesting suggestion mentioned altering the
   /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/fonts.scale file.
 Several pointedly mentioned that the data was in the archive.
 
Respondents who suggested the 105633 indicated it had worked
in their situations however I wish to test this with a
particular page a coworker who is unavailable for now before I
can say it's worked here. I have, however, delayed too long
already in presenting at least this preliminary data for those
who expressed interest.

Clips of responses:

>>
Problem: This is a known problem between Netscape and Solaris 2.6.
Workaround: Netscape has addressed this problem by filing this
workaround in:
http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/4.0/relnotes/unix-4.0.html as
follows:
Solaris 2.6 only: Solaris 2.6/Communicator 4.0x does not render fonts
properly.
To fix the
problem, add the following line to your ~/.xinitrc file: (~/.dtprofile
with
CDE.)
xset +fp /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/
xset fp rehash

The permanent (best) fix is to install the patch 105633.

>>
 I am runnig 2.6 December Rev A and also 2.6 hardware 3/98 with netscape
4.5
and have no problems. I did a full install developer I think and just
deleted
some pkgs like ppp and the power stuff. I also do a initial_install not
an upgrade.
Maybe you are missing some fonts ??

>>
The question has been submitted to netscape, who do not officially
support
2.6 for 4.x since solaris was released after. 4.5, due for late July
should
correct this.

We use 3.01 without any problems, I suggest you try with stripped down
versions of your
dot rc files.

>>
from: Darren Joy UUNET UK, Internet House,

The problem is in the Solaris 2.6 FCS distribution, in which there is a
typo in one of the font configs which causes this to happen.

1. Edit /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/fonts.scale
2. Find the line that reads

        Times-Roman.pfa
-adobe-times-roman-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
   
   and change the 'roman' to 'medium' thus:

        Times-Roman.pfa
-adobe-times-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1

   (spot the typo that has caused all this grief).

3. /usr/openwin/bin/mkfontdir /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Type1
4. Log out and in again to reset X server (because of caching the
   damage is permamanent for each session once done).

That should fix your problem =)

>>
Installing patch 105633-08 will cure the Problem. A work-around
is to use a caller script to switch off Type 1 fonts, something
like

#!/bin/csh
#
setenv MOZILLA_HOME /opt/netscape
setenv CLASSPATH /opt/netscape/plugins:$HOME/.netscape/plugins
setenv XKEYSYMDB /opt/netscape/XKeysymDB
#Turn of Type 1 fonts to work around Solaris 2.6 bug
xset -fp /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/ >& /dev/null
exec /opt/netscape/netscape $*

I also recommend to install Netscape 4.05, which is a lot more stable
on Solaris, we got often core dumps on startup with the older versions.

>>
Interesting. Using the version that comes with 2.6 3/98 I have no
problems, but using a version from the web gives me your same problem...

>>
We had a similar problem here and solved it initially by changing the
font type. I also start netscape with the following script to setup the
environmental variables correctly and then execute the netscape binary.
This script also sets up netscape to run Adobe Acrobat as a plugin.

#!/bin/ksh
NDIR=/opt/netscape
XENVIRONMENT=${NDIR}/Netscape.ad
XKEYSYMDB=${NDIR}/XKeysymDB
XNLSPATH=$NDIR/nls
PATH=/opt/Acrobat3/bin:$PATH
NPX_PLUGIN_PATH=/opt/Acrobat3/Browsers/sparcsolaris
export XNLSPATH XENVIRONMENT XKEYSYMDB NPX_PLUGIN_PATH PATH
exec $NDIR/netscape "$@"

>>
        This was discussed in Netscape's
news://netscape.communicator.unix
discussion list, at the secnews.netscape.com. server. Can't remember
what I did to solve my problem, but it had to do with fonts. Take a
look at DeJaNews, and anyway apply the latest patch cluster from Sun.

>>

Many thanks to all who replied to include:
Dave Schiffrin, David Wiseman, Tim Carlson, Bob Shaw, John Roman, Ed
Baxter, Mark Hokkanen, Larry Zins, Lee Trujillo, Tom Kinter, R. Tomasz
Siwik, Ariane Mather, L. Eric Greenwade, Rick Niziak, Greg MacLeod,
Stevan P. Meck, V.Q. Hoang, Eddy Fafard, Michael J. Connolly, Stacy
Lindberg, Tim Carlson, John Malick, Patrick Gilbert, Darren Joy, Leo
Cazares, Stephen Harris, David L. Markowitz, Tim Fritz, H. Mohamedali,
Thomas Lewis, Casper Dik, Sebastian Benoit, Aaron Lineberger, Andreas
Ehliar, Herman Kuhn, Stuart Little, Clive McAdam, Douglas W. Johnston,
Leandro Guimaraens Faria Corcete Dutra, Jon Wallace, Thomas Anders, Amol
Karnik

-- 

Arthur Gwozdz Phone:(802) 657-6797 FAX:(802) 657-6006 Systems Admin - Unix Computer Science Corp. at General Dynamics A.S. Burlington, VT Pager:800-946-4646 PIN 1448984 email: gwozdzar@bvt.gdarm.com



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