Beginner questions, setting up window manager and paths

[LM <lmemsm at yahoo dot com>]

This is my first time using Cygwin.  I was hoping to build and run some Open Source applications I tried out on Linux on my Windows machine through Cygwin.  I downloaded and installed all the Cygwin files.  Now I have some issues I'm having trouble resolving and would appreciate any help anyone can offer.

The first thing I wanted to do was have either fluxbox or openbox or both available as window managers as I feel more comfortable working with them than other window managers.  I thought an openbox executable came with the Cygwin installation.  However, when I tried to use it, my screen looked funny and the menu was black on black so I couldn't see anything.  I tried the same technique with windowmaker.  I edited ~/.xinitrc using nano and added exec and the window manager name.  Then I ran startx.  Windowmaker works fine, so I'm guessing the problem with openbox is either some missing files or inappropriate settings, not how I'm starting the server or calling the window manager.  How do I get openbox working properly?

When openbox wouldn't work, I downloaded the source to fluxbox version 1.1.1.  I ran ./configure, make, make install.  It built fine, but when I try executing it (as I did with the other window managers), I get the following error message:
      7 [main] sh 2188! _pinfo::dup_proc_pipe: DuplicateHandle failed, pid 2188,
 hProcess 0x6A1, wr_proc_pipe 0x7FC, Win32 error 6
This program cannot be run in DOS mode.

I was able to build and run xfireworks from source on my machine within Cygwin, so it doesn't seem likely that it's an issue with the technique I'm using to build the executable or a problem finding the right compiler.  Any ideas on how to get a working version of fluxbox?

Also, when I built fluxbox the first time, I defaulted my paths to the \usr directory, so the executable went to \usr\bin.  I built a tarball with a build script, like I would on Slackware Linux.  I used spkg running natively on Windows to install the tarball, with the executable going to the \cygwin\usr\bin directory and the other files to their appropriate locations.  When I looked for the files in the Cygwin shell program, I couldn't find them.  I know msys does some strange things with mapping the virtual /usr/bin location to /bin.  However, I was attempting to follow fhs (file hierarchy spec) like on Linux.  Is there a work-around to let /usr/bin map to \cygwin\usr\bin instead of \cygwin\bin?  I know msys has a work-around for this by remapping the drives in the \etc\fstab file.  Was wondering if there was a way to do this in Cygwin (which does not use \etc\fstab).  What directories do people usually install their compiled applications to?  The
 second time I tried with fluxbox, I had the files go to the /usr/local directories.  That seemed to solve the issue of finding the files, but I was still unable to get fluxbox working because of the error message above.  Any ideas?

Thanks in advance for any help or clarifications anyone can offer on these topics.

Sincerely,
Laura
http://www.distasis.com/cpp



      

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/