Graphics Administration Guide (October 2009)

Framebuffer depth and colormaps
Depth 24 is the recommended depth. The benefit is that with the TrueColor visual, applications
have a large 16M color palette available. Because the TrueColor colormap is read only, it can be
shared among multiple applications without any color flashing problems.
The depth 8 framebuffer configuration is mainly intended for backwards compatibility. Some
older applications, or applications that want to use colormap tricks may insist on using the
PseudoColor visual. The PseudoColor colormap is read/write and has 256 colors. Each application
can have a private colormap if requested, or multiple applications can share the same default
colormap.
An issue with the PseudoColor visual is that there is only one hardware colormap. If there are
multiple applications running, each with its own private logical colormap, they have to share
the single hardware colormap. Only one application, the one that has the focus, has the correct
colors. Others do not. You may observe color “flashing” when you move focus between different
windows. If PseudoColor applications can share the same default colormap without running
out of colors, the color flashing does not occur.
Integrity iLO 2 Integrated Remote Console
The Integrity iLO 2 Integrated Remote Console (IRC) feature available on most Integrity servers
provides a virtual Keyboard, Video, and Mouse. IRC allows you to interact with the graphical
console and X Windows from a remote location. What this means is that you can use the Internet
Explorer browser on a PC that would display the contents of the graphics screen from an X server
in a remote location. It would also let you interact with the X server through that PC by forwarding
the mouse and keyboard input from the PC to the X server.
This capability is useful when you have many HP-UX servers in some data center. The system
manager can access any of those servers from a remote location through a simple web interface
from his PC. He does not have to physically enter the data center. The web interface will present
each machine using an X server desktop. That may be preferable over the alternative of a simple
serial text interface.
IRC can be used to access the graphics display not only when X Windows is running, but also
before X Windows start up. If you configure your system console to be VGA rather than Serial,
then IRC lets you interact with the VGA console throughout the boot process, just as if you were
using the actual graphics display and locally attached keyboard.
However, enabling VGA as a console disables the Serial console once you boot into HP-UX, since
HP-UX allows only a single console. Therefore, you must choose the console that serves you the
best. Irrespective of the console, IRC allows you to interact with X Windows when it is running.
For instructions on how to configure the system console to use VGA, see Installation and Update
Guide for your operating system at http://docs.hp.com/.
The following are required to use IRC:
• An Integrity server with Integrity iLO 2 management processor and VGA graphics.
• Integrity iLO 2 Advanced functionality (available as a license key AD301A for entry-class
servers).
• Management processor (MP) firmware version F.02.17 or T.02.17 or newer.
NOTE: Integrity iLO 2 Advanced Pack licenses (AD301A) are factory installed on every
Integrity BL860c and BL870c blade. No additional licenses are needed to use IRC with these
servers.
• USB driver patch. For the latest information on USB driver patches, refer the Update to USB
Driver Support on HP-UX for 11iv(x) document in the USB-00 section under 11iv2 or 11iv3
operating environment sections, available on docs.hp.com.
28 configuring X Server on HP-UX (OEM graphics cards)