This page is dedicated to running Illarion on Linux and Mac OS X. I, personally, have gotten the client to run on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (that’s Dapper Drake) and OS X 10.4.8 (on an Intel MacBook Pro).

I created this page for two reasons. One, I usually end up talking to people after they’ve posted on the Illia technical help forum anyway, so it’s better to aggregate all of the problems and their solutions into one place for simplicity’s sake. And two, I’ll put Google ads on owlmanatt.com some day and I’d like the extra hits. =)

Linux

So, like I said, I have successfully gotten the Illarion client to run under 6.06 with GNOME. However, you will always have an ‘Unable to find requested display mode‘ problem when you first try to get Illarion running. I believe Java uses an X extension called Xinerama to determine what resolutions are available, and by default, this is not turned on in your X config.

The solution is to fire up your favorite text editor and open /etc/X11/xorg.conf up. Find the ServerLayout section of your config file, and enable Xinerama. Add in the Xinerama option highlighted below, save the file, and restart your X server (ctrl-alt-backspace or /etc/init.d/gdm restart will do the trick on Ubuntu).

Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier  "Default Layout"
  Screen    "Screen 0"
  InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
  InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
  Option    “Xinerama”  “true”
EndSection

OS X

I did succeed in getting the Illarion client running on an Intel-based Macbook Pro running OS X 10.4.8 (after getting the devs to update one of the libraries Illarion uses to a version that had a universal binary, score!).

To check what version of OS X you are using, click on the Apple icon in the top-left corner of your screen, then select ‘About This Mac’. Under the big ‘Mac OS X’ header, there version number will be shown (ie, Version 10.4.8). You should also note whether your processor is an Intel chip or PPC (PPC are the G3s and G4s, if it doesn’t distinctly say ‘PPC’ in there…I don’t have a PPC Mac to check this on at the moment.)

Notes on OS X 10.3 and Java
The Illarion client will not run on OS X 10.3.x. The version of Java that Apple last released for the now-unsupported 10.3 is too old for the Illarion client; you will get an error that looks something like this:

Title: Illarion Client
Vendor: illarion.org
Category: Invalid Argument error

The application has requested a version of the Java 2 platform (JRE) that is currently not locally installed. Java Web Start was unable to automatically download and install the requested version. The JRE version must be installed manually.

The only solution I am aware of to remedy this problem is to upgrade to 10.4. That’s $129 for a new Tiger license (and 10.5 is due out sometime soon(tm)). However, if you do opt to upgrade, you may not get the latest version of Java installed. This can be fixed by going to Apple’s support site and downloading the appropriate update (Intel J2RE 5 release 4 / PPC J2RE 5 release 4).

On Control
Note that ctrl-click (usually the key combination to start/stop attacking someone) is treated as a right-click! The workaround for this is to right-click and select ‘Attack!’ on the menu.

F12, by default, is set to bring up the Dashboard. This prevents the Illarion client from allowing you to toggle the character name display mode. To fix this, set Dashboard to use a different key in System Preferences -> Exposé & Dashboard.