Windowmaker on Solaris

This page is devoted to Windowmaker users running Sun Microsystems' Solaris Operating Environment; my emphasis is on the most recent releases of Solaris, Solaris 8 and 9

Latest News!

6/05/2002 Solaris 9 includes WindowMaker on Software Companion CD!
5/23/2002 Added blueslugs.com dockapps; worked on fixing some of the broken links.
4/01/2001 Added port of wmfishtime
3/23/2001 Added port of wmnd
3/01/2001 Added port of bubblemon

Coming Soon!

wmquake Port works but needs polishing (and sound support I think)
mixer We've got a Solaris audio mixer in the works

What's Here?

I have ported or accumulated several dock-apps for Solaris; the programs that port poorly are those which attempt to monitor performance data, since access to this data is quite OS specific. To learn more about dock-apps, I suggest you visit the Dock-App Warehouse.

My goal is to make sure at least the 5 most popular dock-apps work on Solaris. As of this writing, the five most popular dock-apps listed at the Dock-App Warehouse are running on Solaris!

Source code here is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

As with any patch, make a backup of the source code to the program before applying the patch.

How you can Help

Please let me know if this page was helpful to you.
If you know of other dock-apps which work well on Solaris, please let me know.
Stuck trying to get a dock-app working? I might be convinced to port it to Solaris and stick it here; again, contact me.
If you want a place to distribute your diffs which make a dock-app work, contact me and we can place them (or a link to them) here.

Dock-apps

Wmload

Wmload is my favorite Dock-app, although I might be in the minority. You can get the source for it here.

I've implemented the kstat code you need to make it work under Solaris. It shows user, system and wait time, and idle-- this maps up to the output of mpstat(1M). If you have multiple CPUs, they are aggregated. In the picture at left, the dim red represents "user" time, and the bright red is "sys" time. Having high "wait" is pretty uncommon on a desktop, and you can't see it in this picture.

Here is the patch. To apply it:

	$ tar xf wmload-0.9.2.tar
	$ ls -1
	wmload-0.9.2.tar
	wmload.solaris.patch
	wmload-0.9.2/
	$ gpatch --strip=1 -i wmload.solaris.patch
	patching file wmload-0.9.2/Imakefile
	patching file wmload-0.9.2/wmload.c
	$ cd wmload-0.9.2

Edit Imakefile as appropriate...

	$ xmkmf
	imake -DUseInstalled -I/usr/openwin/lib/X11/config
	$ make
	cc -O     -I/usr/openwin/include  -Dsun -Dsparc -DSVR4 -DSYSV -Debug
	-I/opt/sfw/include -I/usr/local/include -c  wmload.c
	rm -f wmload
	LD_RUN_PATH=/usr/openwin/lib cc -o wmload -O      -L/usr/openwin/lib wmload.o
	-L/opt/sfw/lib -R/opt/sfw/lib -L/usr/local/lib -R/usr/local/lib -lXpm -lXext
	-lX11 -lkstat -lm    -lsocket -lnsl  
	$ ./wmload

Wmmon

Someone else ported wmmon to Solaris 2.6, but the implementation has some issues starting with Solaris 8; in short, wmmon uses the BOOT_TIME entry in the utmp database to figure out system uptime; utmp is obsoleted in Solaris 8 in favor of the long standing improvement, utmpx.

The Solaris 2.6 wmmon distribution seems to have vanished. I have an archive of it, which you can obtain here.
The patch to make it work on Solaris 8 (and to fix a couple of other nitty problems) is here.

To apply the patch and build wmmon, follow these steps:

	$ gunzip wmmon.app-solaris26.tar.gz
	$ tar xf wmmon.app-solaris26.tar
	$ ls -1
	wmmon.app-solaris26.tar
	wmmon.app-solaris8-patch
	wmmon.app-solaris26/
	$ gpatch --strip=1 -i wmmon.app-solaris8-patch
	patching file wmmon.app-solaris26/wmmon/Makefile
	patching file wmmon.app-solaris26/wmmon/m-solaris26.c
	patching file wmmon.app-solaris26/wmmon/wmmon.c
	$ cd wmmon.app-solaris26/wmmon
	$ make
	gcc -c -g -I/opt/sfw/include -I/usr/local/include wmmon.c -o wmmon.o
	gcc -o wmmon -g wmmon.o ../wmgeneral/wmgeneral.o ../wmgeneral/misc.o
	../wmgeneral/list.o -L/opt/sfw/lib -R/opt/sfw/lib -L/usr/local/lib
	-R/usr/local/lib -lkstat -lXpm -lXext -lX11 -lsocket
	$ ./wmmon

gpatch is available in /usr/bin starting in Solaris 8.

Bubblemon

It looks like a duck, it floats like a duck. It must be... a load meter!

Phil Lu and I worked to port bubblemon to Solaris. The author worked closely with us to integrate the changes. You can get bubblemon here

wmfishtime

wmfishtime displays the time with some animated fish who zip around in the background.

I contributed a bug fix to port wmfishtime to Solaris; the author graciously accepted the changes.

Wmcdplay

Sam Hawker maintains the excellent wmcdplay dock-app, but hasn't had the chance to take my diffs for building under Solaris.

At the time of this writing, wmcdplay-1.0-beta1 is the latest release. Get it here (go to the "C/C++" section) and then apply this patch as follows:

	$ tar xf wmcdplay-1.0-beta1.tar
	$ ls -1
	wmcdplay-1.0-beta1.tar
	wmcdplay.solaris.patch
	wmcdplay/
	$ gpatch --strip=1 -i ./wmcdplay.solaris.patch
	patching file wmcdplay/Imakefile
	patching file wmcdplay/cdctl.h
	patching file wmcdplay/wmcdplay.cc
	$ cd wmcdplay

now edit Imakefile, as per instructions in that file

	$ xmkmf
	mv -f Makefile Makefile.bak
	imake -DUseInstalled -I/usr/openwin/lib/X11/config
	$ make
	g++  -I/usr/local/include -I/opt/sfw/include  -c  wmcdplay.cc
	rm -f wmcdplay
	LD_RUN_PATH=/usr/openwin/lib g++ -o wmcdplay      -L/usr/openwin/lib wmcdplay.o
	-lXext -lX11 -R/usr/local/lib -L/usr/local/lib -R/opt/sfw/lib -L/opt/sfw/lib
	-lXpm    -lsocket -lnsl  
	$ ./wmcdplay -d /dev/rdsk/c0t6d0s0

You can use the settings in the Imakefile to toggle between using g++ or the Sun Workshop C++ compiler.

Everything in wmcdplay works fine, with the exception of the button designed to "suck in" the CD-ROM tray; the Solaris SCSI disk driver doesn't have an ioctl to do that. Don't forget that you may need to change the device permissions for your CD-ROM drive.

I have not tested wmcdplay with ATAPI CD-ROM drives under Solaris; it works with my SCSI CD-ROM drive.

Wmcube

I ported wmcube to Solaris, and the author graciously accepted my patch. Starting with version 0.96, it should compile and work for (at least) Solaris 2.6, 7 and 8.

wmnd

My friend Sebastian Liusnea ported wmnd to Solaris, deriving the platform specific portions from my port of wmnet. The author graciously accepted the changes. wmnd is particularly neat because it can monitor multiple interfaces.

Wmnet

I have ported the popular wmnet dock-app to Solaris; unfortunately, the maintainers are on hiatus from maintaining the application, and have not accepted the changes.

The patch is here. To apply the patch and build wmnet, follow these steps:

	$ gunzip wmnet-1.06.gz
	$ tar xf wmnet-1.06.tar
	$ gpatch --strip=1 -i wmnet.solaris.patch
	patching file wmnet-1.06/Imakefile
	patching file wmnet-1.06/config.h
	patching file wmnet-1.06/drivers.c
	patching file wmnet-1.06/wmnet.c
	$ cd wmnet-1.06

Edit Imakefile as appropriate...

	$ xmkmf
	imake -DUseInstalled -I/usr/openwin/lib/X11/config
	$ make
        ...
	$ ./wmmon

wmfrontier & wmlabel

My friend Stephen wrote these; they work just fine on Solaris. wmfrontier documents the continuing voyages..., and wmlabel shows the current workspace number (and a little load monitor) for the PWM window manager and other GNOME compliant WMs.

You can get them at www.blueslugs.com/software/dockables.

wmfstatus

I found wmfstatus to be a handy status-display dock-app; however it had some issues in the file-locking code and minor problems compiling under Sun's C compiler. I fixed it and presented the patch to the author, but received no response.

The patch is here. To apply the patch and build wmfstatus, follow these steps:

	$ gunzip wmfstatus-0.4.tar.gz
	$ tar xf wmfstatus-0.4.tar
	$ gpatch --strip=1 -i wmfstatus.solaris.patch
	patching file wmfstatus-0.4/INSTALL
	patching file wmfstatus-0.4/wmfstatus/Makefile
	patching file wmfstatus-0.4/wmfstatus/wmfstatus.c
	$ cd wmfstatus-0.4/wmfstatus

Edit Makefile according to directions therein...

	$ make
        ...
	$ ./wmfstatus

Wmscope

John Meacham wrote wmscope and ported it to Solaris, too; you can find it on his wmscope page.

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