Novell Netware SMP console screensaver for X11, Gnome, and KDE Desktops

Table of Contents

• Description
• Quick Start Guide
• Configuring XScreensaver and Obtaining Older Versions
• Netware SMP Screensaver Options
• Command Line Options
• Building the Screensaver from Source
• Building the Screensaver as an RPM Package (Redhat/CentOS/SuSe)
• Building the Screensaver as a Debian Package (Debian/Ubuntu)
• Copyright
• Authors
• Issues / Problems / Help

Description

The netwaresmp screensaver written by Jeffrey Merkey <jeffmerkey@gmail.com> and Cosimo Streppone <cosimo@cpan.org>, based on PopSquares, Deco hacks, loadsnake, and Novell's Netware SMP. The original Netware SMP screensaver was written by Jeffrey Merkey at Novell in 1994. This version is a rewrite of the original which functions exactly the same way as it did in Netware SMP. Each worm represents a running system cpu processor. As system utilization increases for each cpu, the corresponding worm for that processor gets longer and moves more quicky across the screen. As overall system load increases, all the worms slightly increase in speed. This screensaver is very useful for monitoring cpu loading in a system since you can visually see processor utilization and loading by simply observing the worms.

Quick Start Guide

You can download precompiled Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) and Debian (DEB) packages which contain the entire XScreensaver program with netwaresmp integrated from the release page for this project, or you can build the program from the git sources. The current netwaresmp xscreensaver module is compiled against the XScreensaver v6.08 base and you may have to deinstall any older version of the Xscreensaver program you are running and then reinstall with the RPM or DEB packages listed in the releases section.

Most Linux distributions use an outdated xscreensaver program which lacks current bug fixes and new capabilities.
It's a good idea to upgrade to the xscreensaver 6.08 release since there have been many bug fixes and enhanced features in the most current maintained version of XScreensaver.

If you want to build the program from scratch with the git sources rather than use the pre-compiled RPMS and DEB packages, then please skip to the section Building the Screensaver from Source for instructions on how to do this.

Packages are provided in binary and source versions, and can be downloaded and installed directly or rebuilt for a different target architecture such as ARM64. Package types are Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) packages and Debian (DEB) packages for binary installation and Source RPM packages (SRPMS) and Debbuild SDEB packages for source code installation.

RPM and DEB packages for each release include a binary architecture specific package and a source package which can be downloaded and built/rebuilt and which contains the source code.

For example, the release v6.08-6 contains the following packages in the release section:

RPM Based Packages (RedHat, CentOS, SuSe)

• xscreensaver-netwaresmp-6.08-6.src.rpm
• xscreensaver-netwaresmp-6.08-6.x86_64.rpm

Debian Based Packages (Debian, Ubuntu)

• xscreensaver-netwaresmp-1.6.08-6.sdeb
• xscreensaver_netwaresmp_1.6.08-6_amd64.deb

Removing a Previous Installation of Outdated Versions of XScreensaver

Most of the XScreensaver packages shipped or distributed by RedHat, Debian, and many Distros of Linux are quite old and outdated and do not contain current bug fixes or support and should be upgraded in any event.

To remove a previously installed or outdated version of XScreensaver with the RPM package manager:

rpm -e xscreensaver

To remove a previously installed or outdated version of XScreensaver and all package dependencies with the dnf or yum RPM package manager for RPM based Linux Distributions:

dnf remove xscreensaver

To remove a previously installed or outdated version of XScreensaver with the DEB package manager for Debian based Linux distributions:

dpkg -r xscreensaver

To remove a previously installed or outdated version of XScreensaver and all package dependencies with the apt DEB package manager for Debian based Linux Distributions:

apt autoremove xscreensaver

or

apt-get autoremove xscreensaver

Installing Binary Packages

To install the binary package with the RPM package manager:

rpm -i xscreensaver-netwaresmp-6.08-6.x86_64.rpm

To deinstall the RPM binary package:

rpm -e xscreensaver

To install the binary package with the Debian dpkg package manager for amd64:

dpkg -i xscreensaver_netwaresmp_1.6.08-6_amd64.deb

To deinstall the Debian dpkg binary package:

dpkg -r xscreensaver

Installing Source Packages

To install the source package with the RPM package manager:

rpm -i xscreensaver-netwaresmp-6.08-6.src.rpm

(Note: rpm installs the source code files in /root/rpmbuild/ as top directory for RedHat and CentOS platforms. SuSe platforms install the source code files in /usr/src/packages/)

To install the source package with the Debbuild package tool:

debbuild -i xscreensaver-netwaresmp-1.6.08-6.sdeb

(Note: Debbuild installs the source code files in /root/debbuild/ as top directory)

For building or rebuilding RPMS or DEB Packages after you have installed the associated source packages on your platform, refer to the following:

• Building the Screensaver as an RPM Package (Redhat/CentOS/SuSe)
• Building the Screensaver as a Debian Package (Debian/Ubuntu)

Configuring XScreensaver and Obtaining Older Versions

For detailed instructions on how to install and configure the XScreensaver base program, please refer to the online Documentation and Manuals for XScreensaver. You should also review the Frequently Asked Questions for information about common integration and installation questions and detailed information about the XScreensaver program itself.

You can report any bugs you encounter regarding the XScreensaver program and utilities by opening a bug report at the main XScreensaver support website at www.jwz.org.

You can download other versions of XScreensaver, including the most recent versions at the XScreensaver Download Page.

There are several online archives of XScreensaver releases which contain both current and older released versions of the software. Open Source Labs publishes a mirror of XScreensaver versions.

netwaresmp Options

netwaresmp [-cpus  number of cpus] [-speedup  divisor] [-wormsize  pixels] 
[-display host:display.screen] [-foreground color] [-background color] 
[-window] [-root] [-mono] [-shape <0-6>] [-install] [-visual visual]

Command Line Options

netwaresmp accepts the following options:

• --cpus
  Number of cpus to start. The default is the actual number of cpus detected from /proc/cpuinfo. If you specify more cpus than are installed in your system, only the worms that are mapped to an actual processor will grow longer and faster when cpu load increases for that processor. If you specify less cpus than are installed in your system, the program will default the display to the actual detected cpus.
• --speedup
  speedup divisor to increase worm speed. functions as powers of 2 i.e. speedup=4 runs at 4 times the speed, etc. Default value is 1.
• --wormsize
  size of the worm head in pixels in a range between 10 and 80. Default value is 30. Can be any value but works best if you use multiples of 2 to map to graphics screen dimensions (which are typically numbers which are multiples of 2 or 10).
• --window
  Draw on a newly-created window. This is the default.
• --root
  Draw on the root window.
• --mono
  If on a color display, pretend we're on a monochrome display.
• --shape
  Specify worm drawing mode:
  0 for squares, 1 for circles, 2 for snipes (from the NetWare game "Snipes", the first distributed network game run over a local area network), 3 for triangles, 4 for classic (retro text-based screensaver from NetWare SMP), 5 for trees, 6 for 3D balls,
• --install
  Install a private colormap for the window.
• --visual visual
  Specify which visual to use. Legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual.

Environment

• DISPLAY
  to get the default host and display number.
• XENVIRONMENT
  to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.

Building the Screensaver from Source

It should be noted that since the xscreensaver-netwaresmp code base is provided as a Source RPM and DEB packages, it's very simple and straight forward to rebuild the RPM or DEB packages without needing to resort to a manual rebuild. However, users on ARM64 systems and Debian users may need to build the program manually. You are encouraged to use the RPM method to rebuild the code but in the event you need to do so manually, the following section describes the steps for accomplishing this.

In order to build the xscreensaver with netwaresmp fully integrated, you should first clone the xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp repository. This repository is a generic xscreensaver-6.08 code base with the X11 netwaresmp screensaver included as a patch series. This approach is implemented with a patch series in this manner for two reasons. First, it is necessary to re-run the autoreconf automake program after downloading the sources and applying the patch series in order to integrate the netwaresmp screensaver into the xscreensaver-settings configuration tool. The build for xscreensaver-settings setup utility uses a static file to list integrated screensavers and this file is only updated by running autoreconf against the code base. Second, this approach allows the netwaresmp patch series to be applied to previous versions of xscreensaver package prior to the 6.08 release.

Most Linux distributions use an outdated xscreensaver program which lacks current bug fixes and new capabilities. It should be noted that there are subtle programming differences between many of these earlier versions. I have not fully tested the Netware SMP screensaver on all of these earlier distributions, however, in most cases the existing netwaresmp patch series should work on most of them. If you have problems trying to apply the patch series to an xscreensaver release, please feel free to post an Issue to Issues and I will look into it and get back to you and provide an updated patch for that xscreensaver distribution. It's actually a lot better if you just choose to upgrade to the xscreensaver 6.08 release since there have been many bug fixes and enhanced features in the newer code base. It's also a lot less complicated since the newer release is a single RPM for the entire xscreensaver distribution, instead of xscreensaver being provided as dozens of packages for each xscreensaver distro such as RedHat provides, which is difficult for end users to a manage and navigate.

Installing the xscreensaver-6.08 Code Base

You can clone the screensaver-6.08-netwaresmp code base from github as follows using the 'git clone' command, or you can download the netware-xscreensaver-6.08-6.tar.gz archive directly from github, then untar and extract the files.

Cloning from Github

git clone https://github.com/jeffmerkey/xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp

After running the 'git clone' command, you should see something similiar to:

Cloning into xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp ...
remote: Enumerating objects: 2199, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (2199/2199), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (1366/1366), done.
remote: Total 2199 (delta 796), reused 2192 (delta 789), pack-reused 0
Receiving objects: 100% (2199/2199), 18.37 MiB | 30.94 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (796/796), done.

Downloading

You can also download the xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp-6.08-6.tar.gz archive directly from github from the releases section for the xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp code base:

• xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp-6.08-6.tar.gz

After you download the code base, untar the package into a directory:

tar -xf xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp-6.08-6.tar.gz 

The tar program should extract the files into the following directory. Use ls -ld to list the directory and archive to verify it was untarred correctly:

[root@localhost Downloads]# ls -ld xscreensaver-\*
drwxrwxr-x. 9 root    root        4096 Feb 18 22:25 xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp-6.08-6
-rw-rw-r--. 1 jmerkey jmerkey 20024886 Feb 20 20:56 xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp-6.08-6.tar.gz

Applying the patch and running autoreconf

After you have either git cloned the code base or downloaded and installed the code base manually, you must apply the patch series then run autoreconf. Change directory into the code base directory and apply the patch.

If you cloned the repository:

[root@localhost]# cd xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp
[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp]# 

If you have downloaded and untarred the repository with the tar -xf command manually:

[root@localhost]# cd xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp-6.08-6
[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp-6.08-6]# 

The patch is named netwaresmp-xscreensaver-6.08.patch. You should see a file listing similiar to the following in the base source code directory:

[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp]# ll
total 1396
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 137286 Feb 20 20:33 aclocal.m4
drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root    175 Feb 20 20:33 android
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  22566 Feb 20 20:33 ax_pthread.m4
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  49035 Feb 20 20:33 config.guess
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  11315 Feb 20 20:33 config.h.in
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  18574 Feb 20 20:33 config.rpath
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  34212 Feb 20 20:33 config.sub
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 689143 Feb 20 20:33 configure
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 159261 Feb 20 20:33 configure.ac
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   1554 Feb 20 20:33 COPYING
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root   4096 Feb 20 20:33 driver
drwxr-xr-x. 6 root root  12288 Feb 20 20:33 hacks
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   8527 Feb 20 20:33 INSTALL
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  15358 Feb 20 20:33 install-sh
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   7269 Feb 20 20:33 intltool-extract.in
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  13658 Feb 20 20:33 intltool-merge.in
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  15635 Feb 20 20:33 intltool-update.in
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root   4096 Feb 20 20:33 jwxyz
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  15344 Feb 20 20:33 Makefile.in
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  42160 Feb 20 20:33 netwaresmp-xscreensaver-6.08.patch
drwxr-xr-x. 9 root root   4096 Feb 20 20:33 OSX
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root   4096 Feb 20 20:33 po
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  82109 Feb 20 20:33 README
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  11156 Feb 20 20:33 README.hacking
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   8694 Feb 20 20:33 README.md
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root   4096 Feb 20 20:33 utils
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   4147 Feb 20 20:33 xscreensaver-6.8.spec
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   3426 Feb 20 20:33 xscreensaver.spec
[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp]# 

Apply the patch with the following command:

[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp]# patch -p1 < netwaresmp-xscreensaver-6.08.patch 

The patching process should produde the following output:

[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp]# patch -p1 < netwaresmp-xscreensaver-6.08.patch
patching file driver/XScreenSaver.ad.in
patching file hacks/config/netwaresmp.xml
patching file hacks/Makefile.in
patching file hacks/netwaresmp.c
patching file hacks/netwaresmp.man
patching file xscreensaver.spec
[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp]#

If you see a printout indicating the patch was successfully applied, then you can now run autoreconf program and start the build. You can apply this patch in a similiar manner to most of the xscreensaver code bases prior to 6.08 and it will work on most of the distros. If you run into trouble, post an Issues report on github at Issues / Problems / Help .

Now run autoreconf to re-create the Makefiles and Configuration scripts:

[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp]# autoreconf -f -v 

You should see the followning output if autoreconf completed successfully:

autoreconf: Entering directory `.
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Gettext
autoreconf: running: aclocal --force 
autoreconf: configure.ac: tracing
autoreconf: configure.ac: AM_GNU_GETTEXT is used, but not AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Libtool
autoreconf: running: /usr/bin/autoconf --force
autoreconf: running: /usr/bin/autoheader --force
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Automake
autoreconf: Leaving directory `.
[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp]# 

Now type 'configure' and then type 'make' to build the xscreensaver-netwaresmp-6.08 package. If the make process succeeds, then perform 'make install' to install the xscreensaver package to your system:

[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp]# ./configure; 

Check to make certain the ./configure script completes with no errors. If there were no errors the ./configure program returns a final listing of created Makefiles and updated includes at the very end of the configure script similiar to the following:

current directory: /work/xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp
command line was: ./configure
...
... <snip>
...
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating Makefile
config.status: creating utils/Makefile
config.status: creating jwxyz/Makefile
config.status: creating hacks/Makefile
config.status: creating hacks/fonts/Makefile
config.status: creating hacks/images/Makefile
config.status: creating hacks/glx/Makefile
config.status: creating po/Makefile.in
config.status: creating driver/Makefile
config.status: creating driver/xscreensaver.pam
config.status: creating driver/XScreenSaver.ad
config.status: creating config.h
config.status: config.h is unchanged
config.status: executing po-directories commands
config.status: creating po/POTFILES
config.status: creating po/Makefile
config.status: executing po/stamp-it commands

   #################################################################

    XScreenSaver will be installed in these directories:

             User programs: /usr/local/bin/ (DIFFERS)
             Screen savers: /usr/local/libexec/xscreensaver/ (DIFFERS)
             Configuration: /usr/local/share/xscreensaver/config/ (DIFFERS)
             Extra Fonts:   /usr/local/share/fonts/xscreensaver/ (DIFFERS)
             App Defaults:  /usr/share/X11/app-defaults/

Now type make from the base directory to make and compile the xscreensaver-netwaresmp package.

[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp]# make

If make succeeds without any errors, you can install the newly built packages on your system with 'make install'.

[root@localhost xscreensaver-6.08-netwaresmp]# make install

Building as an RPM Package

In order to build the screensaver as an RPM, the program must be compressed into a tar.gz file and the tar.gz file named to match the versioning information contained in the associated .spec file.

Spec files are special files which contain instructions on how to build a particular package from a source code archive. On Red Hat and CentOS systems, RPMS are built in the /root/rpmbuild/ top directory. SuSe systems build RPMS in the /usr/src/packages/ as top directory. These "top directories" will contain BUILD, BUILDROOT, SPECS, RPMS, SRPMS, and SOURCES subdirectories.

The SPECS directory contains the *.spec files used to build RPMS and SRPMS packages. The SOURCES subdirectory will contain the soure code archive file referred to in the *.spec file used to build the RPM package.

See the Quick Start Guide on instructions for installing the source rpm which installs both the .spec file and source archive file (tar.gz) into the rpm build top directory (i.e. /root/rpmbuild/). You should have previously installed the src.rpm file before attempting to build the rpm. You can also manually install the .spec file into the <top directory>/SPECS/ directory and the source code tarball in the <top directory/SOURCES/ directory, then attempt to build the rpm package.

To build the XScreensaver using the rpm tool, change directories (cd) into the /root/rpmbuild/SPECS/ directory (/usr/src/packages/SPECS/ for SuSe) and enter the following command:

rpmbuild -ba xscreensaver-6.8.spec <enter>

Building as a Debian Package

In order to build the screensaver as a Debian package, the program must be compressed into a tar.gz file and the tar.gz file named to match the versioning information contained in the associated .spec file. Spec files are special files which contain instructions on how to build a particular package from a source code archive.

Debian Packages can be built using a utility called "debbuild" and use a top directory structure which is similar to that used by the RPM tool but using /root/debbuild/ as the "top directory". These "top directories" will contain BUILD, BUILDROOT, SPECS, DEBS, SDEBS, and SOURCES subdirectories and follows a similar layout that is used for RPM files.

The SPECS directory contains the *.spec files used to build DEB and SDEB packages. The SOURCES subdirectory will contain the soure code archive file referred to in the *.spec file used to build the DEB and SDEB packages.

See the Quick Start Guide on instructions for installing the source SDEB which installs both the .spec file and source archive file (tar.gz) into the debbuild top directory (i.e. /root/debbuild/). You should have previously installed the SDEB file before attempting to build the DEB package. You can also manually install the .spec file into the <top directory>/SPECS/ directory and the source code tarball in the <top directory/SOURCES/ directory, then attempt to build the DEB package.

To build the XScreensaver using debbuild, change directories (cd) into the /root/debbuild/SPECS/ directory and enter the following command:

debbuild -vv -ba xscreensaver-6.08.spec <enter>

Copyright

Copyright © 1994-2024 by Jamie Zawinski, Jeffrey Merkey, Cosimo Streppone, and others. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

Authors

Jeffrey Merkey <jeffmerkey@gmail.com>, Cosimo Streppone <cosimo@cpan.org> and Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org> based on PopSquares, Deco hacks, loadsnake, and Novell's Netware SMP. The original Netware SMP screensaver was written by Jeffrey Merkey at Novell in 1994.

Issues / problems / help

If you have any issues, please log them at https://github.com/jeffmerkey/netware-xscreensaver/issues

If you have any suggestions for improvements then pull requests are welcomed, or raise an issue.