OT: configuring fvwm2 (?)

.fvwm2rc

Find it in your home directory.

-- Joe

-- Joseph M. Krzeszewski Mechanical Engineering and stuff snipped-for-privacy@wpi.edu Jack of All Trades, Master of None... Yet

Joe, thanks for the reply, i am _still_ looking for that file.

i am running a cygwin envrironment and don't have a normal

Hmm ... not sure about that environment, but I suspect that the underlying Windows OS may not like files with '.' as the first character in their name.

Another thought -- are you using the unix 'ls' command or one of Windows or MS-DOS's programs? One thing to bear in mind about 'ls' is that by default, it does not list files whose names start with '.', treating them as "hidden" files (or more like "I don't want to be bothered with these files". Add the "-a" option to the command line for "ls" to the them to show up. It will also show the "." (current directory), and ".." (parent directory) file names as well.

I usually use one of two formats of 'ls', depending on whether it is a BSD or a SysV flavored system.

BSD: "ls -lagF"

SysV: "ls -laF"

The options are:

-a show all files, don't suppress those starting with '.'

-l long format, show date, ownership, size, permissions

-g add group ownership to BSD information, suppress it on SysV version.

-F Add trailing character to filenames depending on what type of file it is. Plain files have no trailing character. Executable files have a trailing '*'. Directories have a trailing '/'. Lots of other possibilities on real unix systems, but they mostly make no sense on Windows -- things like character special files (terminals), block special files (disk drives), named pipes and FIFOs (communications between processes), doors, and other things which I'm forgetting for the moment.

If you want to find all files and directories starting with a '.', try this command:

ls -laFd .??*

The .?? makes sure that it is at least three characters long, and starts with a '.', and the '*' covers the rest of the length. The 'd' in the list of options causes it to treat directories as files (that is, it lists their names, not their contents).

Note that the .fvwm2rc file (or whatever it is called) may not exist before you start up fvwm2 the first time. and may not be absolutely necessary anyway (as long as you can live with whatever the defaults are.

I used to use tvwm instead, and wound up with tons of customization in my .tvwmrc file.

All of these initialization files tend to start with a '.', and end with "rc" (stands for "run commands" If you want to find just those, try this command:

ls -laFd .??*rc

They should all be in whatever is used for your home directory.

If you want to find the name that cygwin used, you might try this (assuming some standard unix commands coming with the cygwin). First you need to find the fvwm executable itself, if you don't know where it is. For that, try:

find / -name fvwm\* -print

which should show you the path to it, whether it has a trailing '2' or not. Note that "find" can take quite a while to run, if you've got a lot of disk space, and a lot of files on it.

An easier way, which depends on which shell you're running, would be to type "which fvwm" and "which fvwm2" to get the same information -- *if* your shell supports "which".

Once you have found it, try these:

strings -- /path/to/fvwm | grep 'rc' | less

strings -- /path/to/fvwm2 | grep 'rc' | less

to look for any string containing 'rc', and look at it to see whether it is a path to an "rc" file.

Mine (in an OpenBSD system) shows a "system.fvwmrc" as well as a ".fvwmrc" -- this for a "fvwm", not a "fvwm2". It will use this system.fvwmrc (or in your case, possibly a "system.fvwm2rc" for defaults, if it doesn't find a ".fvwmrc" in your home directory. (Or whatever cygwin thinks is your home directory. :-)

O.K. Here is what the man page says about that:

====================================================================== INITIALIZATION During initialization, fvwm will search for a configura­ tion file which describes key and button bindings, and a few other things. The format of these files will be described later. First, fvwm will search for a file named .fvwm2rc in the user's home directory, then in ${sysconfdir} (typically /usr/local/etc). Failing that, it will look for system.fvwm2rc in ${sysconfdir} for sys­ tem-wide defaults. If that file is not found, fvwm will be basically useless. ======================================================================

It remains to be seen whether you have a /usr/local/etc directory. I do, but you may not.

I hope that this is some help.

Good Luck, DoN.

Loren,

I think you are having trouble finding the fvwmrc file because it doesn't exist in your home directory. Instead, the system is using a 'system-wide' version of the file.

The cygwin environment creates a virtual unix filesystem on your windows box which can create some confusion when trying to explain how to find a file.

If you are using a cygwin window to find the file, then try looking for /etc/X11/fvwm/system.fvwmrc (the "cygwin" window will allow yo to use the standard unix '/' as the file seperator).

From the windows point of view, the unix filesystem is rooted in the directory where you installed the cygwin system (I believe the default location is C:\cygwin). That is the 'root' directory of the cygwin environment. So try looking for C:\cygwin\etc\X11\fvwm\system.fvwmrc (I have used the '' as the directory seperator because a "command prompt" window or other MSwindow tool will require that form).

You may need to look around in /etc/X11 to find the system-wide fvwmrc file if I am misremembering the name. Once you find the file, you can copy it to your home directory and rename it as .fvwmrc and modify it to your own prefered settings. Or you could modify the system-wide rc file but that wouldn't be The Right Thing (tm).

HTH,

Jon Etheredge

right, this has been on my back burner but i got lucky reading a linux ng yesterday:

lcoe@c1932201-a ~ $ wc `locate Setup95` 1577 4277 31973 /usr/X11R6/share/fvwm/FvwmScript-Setup95

as you can see, this is a large file, it calls perl and i don't know what all (Andy sez ;-). but thanks to all for the support, your replies keep this on my mind. Best Regards to all, --Loren