New xfs (X font server) initscript for testing. Should work in all Fedora Core OS releases, as well as RHL 8 and RHEL3 and newer. Please test!

[Mike A. Harris]

I have made some enhancements to the xfs initscript, which
are intended to fix a few bugs that have been reported, and
to slightly speed up xfs startup time in some cases.

In addition, fc-cache is ran always now, to ensure that all
fontconfig font directories contain updated cache files,
which should help improve font access times.

Since this is a very fast operation, which should generally
help provide runtime font performance improvements, we
believe it is worthwhile doing every time xfs is restarted.

We've taken special care to try and make sure there should
be no regressions with these changes, however before I
include this in a new Fedora development build, I would like
to have as many people as possible voluntarily test the
changes manually, so we can have reasonable regression
testing on some systems out there before forcing the changes
on everyone via rawhide.

In order to test the new initscript, please follow the
following steps:

1) Download my new initscript via FTP at:
    ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris/xfs.init

The following steps should be done as root:

2) make a backup copy of your existing xfs initscript:
    cp /etc/init.d/xfs /root/

3) Move the new xfs.init to /etc/init.d/xfs:
    mv xfs.init /etc/init.d/xfs

4) Restart xfs:
    service xfs restart

NOTE:  When you restart xfs while the X server is running
and using it, it will break the connection between xfs and
the X server, causing you to lose core fonts in X.  You
can either restart the X server, or you can use xset to
re-add the newly restarted xfs to the font path.

Something like this should work:
     xset +fp unix/:7100 ; xset fp rehash


I'd like to hear both BAD *and* GOOD feedback from whoever
tests this, so if you test it and do not notice anything
different, please respond to let me know that also.

If you notice any regressions with this initscript
compared to the previous one you were using, please
respond with full details of the problem, and exact
error messages you see (if any).  Also indicate if
you are using only stock OS supplied fonts, or fonts
you have added yourself.  It'd be particularly good
to hear feedback from people using lots of 3rd party
fonts, as we do not normally have such fonts for
testing purposes internally.

Another test you might optionally want to try, is to
time the old initscript, and the new one, and note
any differences.  To do this, try running the
following command with each initscript:

    /usr/bin/time service xfs restart


Please reply directly back to the list, so others
can see your feedback as well, so if I need to
respond, I don't need to respond to multiple people
individually.  ;o)

Assuming there are no regressions (or no serious
ones anyway), I want to release this in the next
xorg-x11 rawhide build, so the sooner I hear
feedback the better.  ;)

That's about it.  Thanks in advance for testing.