@(#)FAQ	6.39 01/05/02

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
--------------------------

If you have a question about xmcd/cda or encounter a problem,
please read through this file.  You questions may already be
answered in here.  If not, send e-mail to the author.
Suggestions to add new entries to this list are also welcome.

----------
Q. Why do I have to type in the disc and track titles?  Isn't the
   information recorded on the CD?

A. No.  There is no way to get such information by reading the CD.
   Recently there is a new CD-TEXT technology which does provide
   some information, but few CDs have it.  Fortunately, Xmcd and cda
   supports CDDB, which is an Internet CD information database.
   The disc and track titles, plus much much more are automatically
   downloaded from the CDDB server and displayed when you load a CD
   (if you enable CDDB access).  In the rare occasion that CDDB
   does not have information about your CD, you type it in and Submit
   it to CDDB for all to share.
----------
Q. When I compile the xmcd source code, I get an error about
   XmClientLibs.

A. Your system's imake configuration is not set up to properly
   support Motif.  To work around this problem, see the INSTALL
   file and read the comments in the xmcd_d/Imakefile.
----------
Q. I get the following warning when I start xmcd:

    Warning: locale not supported by C library, locale unchanged

A. This message is displayed when you do not have a properly defined
   LANG environment variable.  If you are not using an international
   character set then you can usually ignore this message.
----------
Q. I get the following message when I start xmcd:
   
    Error: attempt to add non-widget child "dsm" to parent "xmcd"
    which supports only widgets

A. On certain platforms, there appears to be a problem with
   the vendor shell widget class in the shared Motif library.
   Rearranging the order of the Motif and X libraries linked may
   alleviate this problem, and re-linking with the static
   Motif library instead of the shared version usually solves this
   problem.
----------
Q. When I start xmcd, I get error messages such as these:

    Warning: translation table syntax error: Unknown keysym name: osfActivate
    Warning: ... found while parsing '<Key>osfActivate: BulletinBoardReturn()'
    Warning: translation table syntax error: Unknown keysym name: osfCancel
    Warning: ... found while parsing '<Key>osfCancel: BulletinBoardCancel()'
    etc...

A. The LIBDIR/XKeysymDB file is not installed on your system (where
   LIBDIR is typically /usr/lib/X11).  A XKeysymDB file is supplied
   with the xmcd release.  When the XKeysymDB is installed in the
   proper location this problem should go away.
----------
Q. Xmcd prints one of the following error messages:

    The LIBDIR/app-defaults/XMcd file cannot be located, or is the
    wrong version.  A correct version of this file must be present
    in the appropriate directory in order for xmcd to run.  Please
    check your xmcd installation.

   or,

    Neither the XMcd.libdir resource nor the XMCD_LIBDIR environment is
    defined!

A. Your xmcd software may be improperly installed.  If you compiled xmcd
   from the source code, be sure to use "make install" to install the
   software.

   If you have xmcd 2.4 or earlier, make sure that the xmcd_d/XMcd.ad file
   is installed as LIBDIR/app-defaults/XMcd (where LIBDIR is typically
   /usr/lib/X11, but is platform-dependent).  Check the contents of this
   file to make sure the XMcd.version parameter exists and matches the
   version of xmcd you're running.  If the XMcd.version field is missing
   or wrong, do not edit the file to correct it.  Install a correct version
   of the file instead.

   If you have xmcd 2.5 or later, make sure you are starting xmcd via
   the appropriate startup script (BINDIR/xmcd) and that the XFILESEARCHPATH
   and XMCD_LIBDIR environment variables in it are correctly defined.

   If the above doesn't resolve the problem, check to make sure you don't
   have an old or incorrect version of the XMcd file installed in your
   home directory, or in any of the directories specified by your
   XAPPLRESDIR, XFILESEARCHPATH and XUSERFILESEARCHPATH environment
   variables.  Also, check your $HOME/.Xdefaults file.
----------
Q. Xmcd dies with a message similar to the following upon startup:

    ld.so.1: xmcd: fatal: libXm.so.2: can't open file: errno=2
    Killed

   or

    dynamic linker : xmcd : error opening libXm.so.2
    Killed

A. Your xmcd binary was compiled to link with dynamic libraries.
   On SVR4 and certain other systems, a setuid program such as xmcd
   will search only the /usr/lib and /usr/ccs/lib for dynamic libraries
   (for security concerns).  However, some of the dynamic libraries
   that xmcd needs are not in these standard locations.  This is notably
   true for the Motif (libXm), Xt Intrinsics (libXt) and X11 (libX11)
   libraries.

   In the example messages above, libXm.so.2 is not found.  You may
   also run into the same problem with other libraries.

   A solution is to create symbolic links such that these needed
   dynamic libraries are linked to /usr/lib, and thus can be found
   by xmcd.  The xmcd install procedure ("make install" or "install.sh")
   has built-in support to search for the needed dynamic libraries and
   to create the links for you.

   The install.sh script will only search the following directories
   for dynamic libraries:

	/usr/X/lib
	/usr/X11/lib
	/usr/X386/lib
	/usr/X11R5/lib
	/usr/X11R6/lib
	/usr/openwin/lib
	/usr/X/desktop
	/usr/Motif/lib
	/usr/Motif1.1/lib
	/usr/Motif1.2/lib
	/usr/Motif2.0/lib
	/usr/dt/lib
	/usr/lib/X11

   If your xmcd binary needs a shared library that's not in these
   locations, you must create the symbolic link by hand with the
   ln(1) -s command.

   If you don't like the symbolic link approach, an alternate solution
   is to recompile xmcd such that the dynamic library locations are
   specified with the -R option to the ld(1) command.  To do this, you
   must be adept at editing the xmcd_d/Makefile and making the
   appropriate changes, compile the xmcd sources, and re-installing
   the binary.
----------
Q. Cda prints the following error message:

    XMCD_LIBDIR environment not defined.

A. If you have xmcd 2.4 or earlier, you must set the XMCD_LIBDIR
   environment variable to run cda.  Typically this is set to
   "/usr/lib/X11/xmcd" (your local set-up may vary).  You set the
   environment variable as follows:

   Bourne Shell, Korn Shell or bash:
	XMCD_LIBDIR=/usr/lib/X11/xmcd; export XMCD_LIBDIR

   C Shell or tcsh:
	setenv XMCD_LIBDIR /usr/lib/X11/xmcd

   If you have xmcd 2.5 or later and still encounter this problem,
   then either you are not starting cda via the appropriate startup script,
   or your cda startup script is not correctly configured.  Edit your
   startup script (BINDIR/cda) and correct the XMCD_LIBDIR line.
----------
Q. Xmcd prints messages similar to the following (and some or all of
   the xmcd features are not displayed in their proper colors):

    Warning: Cannot allocate colormap entry for "Grey75"
    Warning: Cannot allocate colormap entry for "CadetBlue4"
    ...

A. Your X display has run out of colormap entries.  Colormap entries
   are a limited resource, and there are other color-intensive
   applications running on your X display that has consumed all of
   of them.  This is especially prevalent on X displays that has
   8 bit-planes or less (supporting 256 colors or less).

   The solution is to start xmcd before running other color-intensive
   applications, such as web browsers or graphics programs.  With xmcd
   version 2.5 or later, you may also start xmcd with the -instcmap
   option (or set the installColormap X resource to True) to make
   xmcd run with its own private colormap.  Note that on some displays,
   this would cause other windows to appear in the wrong colors when
   xmcd has the input focus.
----------
Q. Xmcd seems to consume more and more memory over time, or experience
   other functional or display anomalies.

A. If you are using xmcd with an early version of the LessTif library
   (A free Motif clone), this may be the cause of the problems.  Switch
   to a newer version of LessTif, or use the pre-compiled xmcd binaries
   that are distributed via the xmcd web site,
----------
Q. Xmcd or cda complains that the CD is busy.

A. Check the system for another xmcd or cda process running on
   the same CD-ROM device.  If there are no other xmcd/cda process,
   then look for a file /tmp/.cdaudio/lock.XXXX where XXXX is the
   hexadecimal string of the device number.  Remove this file and
   the problem should go away.  Normally a new xmcd/cda process will
   inherit the lock from a previously exited xmcd/cda process, but
   if the original process ID is now re-used by another process
   this will not work.
----------
Q. Xmcd or cda complains that the device is not a CD-ROM and quits.

A. Ensure that the CD-ROM drive is connected and functioning,
   and that xmcd/cda is properly configured.

   If you have one of those unusual OEM SCSI CD-ROM drives that
   identify themselves as a hard disk (such as the Toshiba CD-ROM
   XM revision 1971 units OEM'ed by SGI), you will need to add
   -DOEM_CDROM to the libdi_d/Makefile and recompile.
----------
Q. Xmcd and cda re-loads the CD tray a few seconds after ejecting.

A. This tends to occur with some non-SCSI CD-ROM drives.
   If you have xmcd's closeOnEject parameter set to True, that
   could be the cause.  Try setting it to False.  If this still
   doesn't fix the problem, or cause other problems, send a bug
   report to the CD-ROM driver's author.

   Meanwhile, you can increase the insertPollInterval parameter
   in xmcd/cda to make this "auto-load" behavior happen later.
----------
Q. If xmcd/cda is started without a CD in the drive, the Load/Eject
   control on xmcd/cda cannot be used to load a CD.

A. This is a "feature".  Xmcd and cda cannot issue a "load" command
   to the drive without having the device open.  On many UNIX systems,
   the CD device cannot be opened until a disc is inserted.  Thus,
   the CD must be loaded manually at the drive the first time around.
   Subsequently, the Load/Eject control on xmcd/cda should work
   normally.
----------
Q. If I eject and load a different CD, the xmcd/cda track list
   still shows the information for the previous CD.

A. This is a problem with some versions of the sbpcd driver on Linux.  
   The sbpcd driver caches the CD's TOC (table of contents) in the
   driver, but neglects to invalidate this cache when the CD is ejected.
   There is a workaround:  Set the closeOnEject parameter to True in
   your XMCDLIB/config/DEVICE file and it should work.
----------
Q. On the BSDI BSD/OS 2.x system, I get the following message when I
   use some of the xmcd and cda controls:

	data write failed: Read only file system

A. You need to apply a patch to your disk driver.  See the PLATFORM file
   for details.
----------
Q. Xmcd seems to be real slow to respond to mouse clicks.

A. Make sure your system has enough memory.  X11 programs, especially
   Motif applications, consume a lot of memory.  Xmcd is no exception.
   Your system may be swapping and paging heavily, causing the
   performance degradation.  Try closing some unneeded windows.  Also,
   the X server may have a memory leak which causes it to grow
   over time.  Try stopping the entire X session and starting a new
   one.

   Run some system performance analysis tools (sar, u386mon, vmstat,
   rtpm, crash, etc.) to see if there is a system tuning issue.

   Also, setting the xmcd X resource XMcd*mainShowFocus to False may
   improve performance somewhat.
----------
Q. Clicking the mouse button #3 on the volume control, balance control
   and track warp slider thumbs will not bring up the help window.

A. Click on the label area instead of the thumb.  This is a limitation
   of the Motif scale widget.
----------
Q. When clicking mouse button #3 on the volume control numeric label
   area, sometimes the help window does not appear.

A. The problem occurs when the current keyboard input focus is on the
   volume control slider.  This is a limitation of the Motif scale
   widget.  The work-around is to click another button first to change
   the keyboard focus to another button, then click the #3 button
   on the volume control numeric label to bring up the help window.
----------
Q. Xmcd/cda seems to be playing the CD, but there is no sound.

A. Make sure you are not running a "demo" version of xmcd.  If you
   see this message when you start xmcd or cda, then you are running
   the demo version that does not actually work with a real CD-ROM
   drive:

    CD-ROM simulator version x.xx (pid=xxxxx) starting...

   You will get the demo mode if you compile and run xmcd/cda on
   an unsupported OS platform.

   Also, make sure your CD-ROM drive audio output is connected to
   something.  You may either connect headphones or amplified speakers
   to the front jack, or connect the rear audio output to an external
   amplifier.

   On PC platforms, you can also connect the CD-ROM audio output to
   a sound card.  If a sound card is used, you must also use an audio
   mixer program to set the CD Input Level and Master Volume. I recommend
   the xmmix (Motif Audio Mixer) utility, which supports the OSS and
   OSS/Free sound drivers.  Visit the xmmix web site for information:

	http://www.amb.org/xmmix/

   Xmcd/cda controls the CD-ROM drive only, and does not control the
   built-in audio hardware on SGI, Sun, HP and some other workstations.
   Thus, there is no way to make the CD-ROM play via the workstation's
   internal speakers, unless an external program is used to control the
   audio hardware.

   For Sun Solaris (Sparc and x86 systems not running OSS), you can
   start the "Audio Tool" and then set the Record Source to the CD.  That
   should allow xmcd and cda to play through the built-in speakers.
   Alternatively, you can try the "sac" package, downloadable via the
   xmcd web site.  Different Sun Sparc systems have different audio
   hardware, and x86 systems have an even greater variation of sound
   cards.  There is no guarantee that sac will work on your system.
   Also, since sac is not developed by the author of xmcd, no support
   will be provided for it.  If neither the Audio Tool nor sac would
   work for you then you should use external speakers as described
   below.

   For SGI and other such systems, there is currently no external audio
   control program that I know of.  I recommend using headphones or good
   quality external amplified speakers, connected to the front jack on
   your CD-ROM drive.  This setup should provide superior sound quality
   than the system's internal speakers.

   Note: The SGI O2 system does not provide a CD-ROM audio output jack.
   The headphone jack on the system is not connected directly to the
   CD-ROM drive.  Thus, there is currently no solution to this problem on
   that platform.
----------
Q. I have a Toshiba SCSI-2 CD-ROM drive and sometimes when I run
   xmcd/cda I get no sound, even though the CD appears to be playing
   normally.  The xmcd/cda volume control slider does not have
   an effect.

A. Some Toshiba SCSI CD-ROM drives support two means of software-
   controlled volume settings.  One of these is the SCSI-2 method,
   using the "mode select" command.  The other is via a SCSI-1
   Toshiba vendor-unique command, and only gives mute/un-mute functions.
   Xmcd/cda will use the appropriate method, depending on whether
   you configured it to operate the drive as a Toshiba SCSI-2 or SCSI-1
   unit.

   Even though you are using xmcd configured to SCSI-2 mode, the
   SCSI-1 mode muting may have somehow been activated, thus silencing
   the audio.  To determine if this is the cause, do the following:

   1. Run the XMCDLIB/config/config.sh script, and re-configure
      xmcd/cda to operate the drive as a SCSI-1 Toshiba unit (such
      as the XM-3201).

   2. Restart xmcd, play an audio CD, and move the volume control slider
      around.  Note that it will only go to the 0 or 100 settings in
      this mode.  Leave it in the 100 position, then quit xmcd.

   3. Configure xmcd/cda back to run as the appropriate SCSI-2 unit.

   4. Play a CD.  Is there sound?  Does the volume control slider work?

   A possible cause of this phenomenon, is that some other application
   that accesses the CD-ROM drive was using the Toshiba SCSI-1 vendor
   unique command set to control the drive, and left the drive in the
   muted state when it exited.  Xmcd, when configured to run the drive
   as a SCSI-2 unit, does not issue SCSI-1 vendor-unique commands to
   re-enable the sound.

   To remedy this, you may choose to operate xmcd/cda only in the
   SCSI-1 mode (as an XM-3201), but you lose some of the features
   in xmcd/cda.  The other option is to avoid using the other
   application that caused this in the first place.  Or, send a
   complaint to the vendor/author of that application.
----------
Q. Xmcd/cda reports "no disc" even though there is a CD in the drive.

A. Your system must be set up properly to use a CD-ROM drive.  A good
   test is to see if you can mount ISO9660/High Sierra CD-ROM
   file-systems.  If your system does not support ISO9660 but otherwise
   supports a raw CD-ROM device, you can try typing this command while
   logged in as the super-user (with a DATA CD loaded in the CD-ROM
   drive):

    dd if=DEVICE of=/dev/null bs=2k count=10

   where DEVICE is the CD-ROM device node, such as /dev/rcd0 (SCO Open
   Server), /dev/rcdrom/cdrom1 (UnixWare) or /dev/rsr0 (SunOS 4.1.x).
   The device node should be a character special file (except on Linux).
   To check, use "ls -l" to display the device node, and it should have
   a 'c' as the first letter in the output.  Here is an example:

    $ ls -l /dev/rcdrom/cdrom1
    crw-rw-rw-    2 root     sys       21,  0 Aug 14  1997 /dev/rcdrom/cdrom1

   For Linux, the CD-ROM device should be a block special file:

    $ ls -l /dev/scd0
    brw-rw-rw-   1 root     root      11,   0 Aug 25  1996 /dev/scd0

   If the dd command fails, then either your hardware is not set up
   properly, or your OS is not configured to support the CD-ROM device.
   You should fix the problem first before attempting to run xmcd/cda.

   Once you have validated basic functionality with data CDs, then
   make sure xmcd/cda is properly configured.  Run the
   XMCDLIB/config/config.sh script (where XMCDLIB is the directory
   where the xmcd/cda support files are installed).

   Also, be sure that you are running on a supported operating system
   and hardware platform, and that the minimum OS version requirement
   is met.  Some platforms require special kernel or driver
   configuration to run xmcd/cda.  See the PLATFORM and INSTALL files
   for details.
----------
Q. Some of the features of xmcd/cda do not work, such as the volume
   control, balance control, channel routing, caddy eject, or index
   search buttons.

A. Your CD-ROM drive may not support some of these features.
   Another possibility is that the software is improperly configured.
   Run the XMCDLIB/config/config.sh script to re-configure xmcd/cda.
----------
Q. The xmcd shuffle mode button doesn't work, it just beeps when I click
   on it.

A. Shuffle mode can only be enabled when the CD is stopped.  If your
   CD is playing, stop the playback and the shuffle button should work.
   This is a safeguard feature to prevent unintentionally interrupting
   the playback.
----------
Q. I am using a non-SCSI CD-ROM drive under Linux.  The system seems to
   hang for a few seconds when I start or stop the CD via xmcd/cda,
   then everything works fine after that.

A. This is the characteristic of the particular CD-ROM device driver
   and can be considered "normal" (or send bug report to the driver
   author).
----------
Q. I would like to install xmcd such that the binary and its configuration
   files are all on NFS-shared directories.  However, the workstations
   using the shared NFS resources have different brand/models of CD-ROM
   drives, so the default configuration does not work.  How do I deal
   with this?

A. For xmcd 2.4 and later, use this simple procedure:

   1. Install xmcd and cda normally, except specify an NFS-mounted
      location for its BINDIR and XMCDLIB.  Since root privilege may
      not be applicable across an NFS-mounted directory, you may need
      to run the installation as a non-root user.  Care should be taken
      to ensure that these directories are writable by you.  Also, be
      sure to fix the permissions of the xmcd and cda binaries to
      make them setuid root.

   2. Go to the XMCDLIB directory, you should find that there are
      host-specific symbolic links pointing to the common.cfg file and
      the device-specific configuration file (i.e., they have the
      -HOSTNAME extension in their names, where HOSTNAME is the
      system's host name; e.g., "common.cfg-snoopy").  Remove the
      symbolic links and replace them with copies of the real configuration
      files that they point to (Do not remove the original common.cfg
      file).  Xmcd and cda will use the host-specific configuration
      files instead of the generic ones if found.

   3. You may repeat step 2 for every client system after running the
      XMCDLIB/config/config.sh script to configure xmcd.

   For xmcd 2.3 and earlier, this can be addressed with a wrapper script
   around the xmcd and cda binaries and adding a symbolic link to the device
   node.

   1. Install xmcd and cda normally, except specify an NFS-mounted
      location for its BINDIR and XMCDLIB.  Since root privilege may
      not be applicable across an NFS-mounted directory, you may need
      to run the installation as a non-root user.  Care should be taken
      to ensure that these directories are writable to you.  Also, be
      sure to fix the permissions of the xmcd and cda binaries to
      make them setuid root.

   2. Rename your xmcd binary as xmcdprog and cda binary as cdaprog
      (substitute BINDIR with the appropriate path):

	cd BINDIR
	mv xmcd xmcdprog
	mv cda cdaprog

   3. Create an xmcd wrapper shell script with the following contents
      and install with 755 execute permissions in BINDIR:

	#!/bin/sh
	exec xmcdprog -dev /dev/rcdrom-`uname -n` $*

   4. Similarly, create a cda wrapper as above, but substitute "xmcdprog"
      with "cdaprog".

   5. Create a symbolic link in /dev to link to the appropriate CD-ROM
      device (substitute DEVICE with the correct device on your system.
      e.g., /dev/rsr0 on SunOS 4.1.x, and HOSTNAME should be the
      workstation's host name):

	cd /dev
	ln -s DEVICE rcdrom-HOSTNAME

   6. Run the XMCDLIB/config/config.sh script for each workstation
      (where XMCDLIB is the directory where the xmcd/cda support files
      are installed).  When prompted for the device name, enter
      "/dev/rcdrom-HOSTNAME" to configure the drive on that workstation
      host.
----------
Q. I would like to purchase a CD-ROM drive for use with xmcd/cda and
   for data CD purposes.  Which do you recommend?

A. I will not give specific brand and model recommendations, but I
   will recommend a SCSI-2 drive over a non-SCSI one.  More features
   are supported by xmcd on SCSI drives than on non-SCSI units.

   Furthermore, SCSI CD-ROM drives are universally supported on the
   various OS and hardware platforms (whereas non-SCSI units only
   work on some platforms).  This makes a SCSI drive more portable
   between different systems, and there is less worry about getting
   obscure device drivers to work.

   Note that not all SCSI-2 drives are created equal, some of them
   implement more of the audio-related commands than others.  If you
   do a careful study of xmcd's libdi_d/cfgtbl/* files, you'll get
   a good glimpse at the CD-ROM drives' capabilities.  Some of
   xmcd's features will not work unless these commands are fully
   implemented on the drive.  Also, see the DRIVES file for specific
   drive-related notes.

   Note that some workstations require special OEM versions of the
   CD-ROM drives (such as Sun, which requires support of 512-byte
   block sizes rather than the standard 2048).
----------
Q. Does xmcd run on any flavor of Microsoft Windows or Apple MacOS?

A. No.  Xmcd was developed to be an application for the X window system,
which is found on most UNIX workstations as well as OpenVMS.  Although
there are products that turn your MS-Windows or MacOS desktop into a
networked X display, there are currently no way of running an X
application natively on these platforms.  For MS-Windows users, you
might want to look into one of the applications listed on the Gracenote
web site ( http://www.cddb.com/ ) Better yet, convert to Linux, FreeBSD
or one of the other UNIX flavors!
----------
Q. What If I Don't Have Motif?

A. This is a common question for users of the FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux
and other platforms that do not come with Motif development and/or
run-time environments.  No problem, there are answers!

Pre-compiled xmcd binaries with statically-linked Motif library is
distributed via the official xmcd web site for most of these platforms.
You can just download it, install and run.

If you must build xmcd from source yourself and don't have Motif,
you can use the LessTif (freely available Motif clone) package.
LessTif is an ideal choice for xmcd, because it is under the GNU
General Public license and embodies the same open source spirit as
xmcd.  Visit their web site at:

	http://www.lesstif.org

For best results, LessTif 0.92.0 or later is strongly recommended.

Alternatively, you may use OpenMotif, which is an open source release
of OSF/Motif available for use on platforms that are themselves open
source:

	http://www.openmotif.org

----------
Q. How do I turn on/off the automatic CDDB Music Browser feature?

A. See the autoMusicBrowser parameter in your XMCDLIB/config/common.cfg
file.  You may change it in that file (which affects all xmcd users on the
system), or you may put that parameter in your $HOME/.xmcdcfg/common.cfg
file.

