Basic Installation

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Installing Photon Runtime onto a hard disk
• Adding additional network licenses
• Installing additional software
• Starting Photon
• Technical support
• A word about Photon files

Installing Photon Runtime onto a hard disk

The following are included with your Photon Runtime package:

• Parts List & Installation Note
• Release Notes

The Parts List & Installation Note details the software prerequisites required by the particular software version that you're installing along with any special hardware requirements. It also gives detailed installation instructions for the distribution media being used. The Release Notes contain last minute updates and changes.

Your distribution media could be one of the following:

• diskette
• CD-ROM
• online

Adding additional network licenses

If you have QNX 4.22 or earlier, your system supports "old style" licensing. QNX 4.23 supports both "old style" and "new style" licensing. For more information about licensing, including how to install additional network licenses, refer to your QNX OS documentation.

Installing additional software

Each of the packages listed below comes with a Parts List & Installation Note that provides installation instructions for you to follow:

• Photon Developer's Toolkit - provides the complete Photon development environment, including the Photon Application Builder (PhAB), the C language header files and libraries, and a number of sample applications.
• Photon Japanese Language Supplement - contains the Photon front-end processor for Japanese. Users can provide input either in Romaji (which is converted to Hiragana), or in Kana directly from a Japanese keyboard. This product supports scalable fonts and includes a dictionary and a number of utilities.
• Phindows - gives you access to Photon from your Windows 95 or NT desktop.
• PhinX - lets you display Photon on any X platform.
• Voyager Browser - the Photon Web browser.

Note that the distribution media for these additional QSSL software products could be one of the following:

• diskette
• CD-ROM
• online

Follow the particular installation instructions that come with the software distribution media you're using.

Starting Photon

To start Photon:

Type the following command at the OS command prompt: ph

Selecting initial graphics settings

The first time Photon is started on a computer (node), the startup script will run two utilities to probe the hardware environment in order to determine which graphics driver and input parameters to use:

• crttrap graphics probing utility
• inputtrap input probing utility

The probing utilities will pick initial default settings that can be customized as required.

Display configuration

The Display Configuration dialog shows the current graphics settings picked by the crttrap utility and a list of all graphics modes supported by the graphics card. The dialog is displayed automatically when Photon starts for the first time. You can also change the display settings at any time using the Photon Window Manager or the Desktop Manager (see the section "Using the Configuration tool" in the Customizing Photon chapter in the Photon User's Guide).

The list of available graphics modes displayed in the following dialog may be different from those on your machine.

To change the graphics mode:

1. Select the appropriate Resolution and Color Depth from the tree structure , and any additional settings you want.
2. Click Done or press F2 to save the settings and close the dialog.

You can change the display settings any time in the future using the Photon Window Manager or Desktop Manager (see the Customizing Photon chapter in the Photon User's Guide). Provided the installation has gone well, Photon should be ready to use at this point. For introductory information about using Photon, see the Photon User's Guide.

Input manager

The Input manager uses the default input settings determined by the inputtrap probing utility. The Input manager handles the keyboard and any pointing devices you have, including mice, pens, touchscreens, etc. Some input devices can't be detected by inputtrap, so you may find that some or all of your pointing devices won't work with the default input settings.

Solving startup problems

If you have problems starting Photon (e.g. if either crttrap or inputtrap can't determine your hardware environment appropriately), you can try to start Photon in its "safe" mode by typing the following at the OS command prompt:

ph -s

This will start Photon in VGA, 16-color mode with a keyboard handler only (no mouse). Using the keyboard, you can start a shell as follows:

1. Press Alt -Enter to display the Display Workspace menu.
2. Press S (Shell) to start the terminal program.

From here you may perform some of the troubleshooting techniques described in Appendix A, Troubleshooting.

Technical support

To obtain technical support for any QNX product, visit the Technical Support section in the Support area on our website (www.qnx.com). You'll find a wide range of support options, including our free web-based QNX Developer's Network at http://support.qnx.com/.

Supported hardware

For up-to-date information on the various platforms, video cards, etc., that we support, go to the Supported Hardware section on the QNX Developer's Network (http://support.qnx.com/) website.

A word about Photon files

Most of the Photon Runtime files can be found under the /usr/photon directory. The trap files are stored in the /etc/config/trap directory. The files are stored in the existing OS directory tree structure according to the kind of services they provide. The general directory structure of a typical installation is as follows:

User application configuration files

Here's a summary of the user application configuration files: