Re: 2.1.1 and xterm
Re: 2.1.1 and xterm
- Subject: Re: 2.1.1 and xterm
- From: William Davis <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 20:52:42 -0500
On Dec 15, 2007, at 7:17 PM, Merle Reinhart wrote:
John,
My apologies if I'm still not understanding your questions.
What the /tmp/launch-xxxx/:0 format is pointing at is a unix socket
which launchd is watching (do an ls on that file and you'll see that
it is a socket; with lsof you can see that launchd is listening on
it; and if you look at the launchd agent org.x.X11.plist, you will
see that when that socket is touched, X11.app is launched). If you
leave it as such, then the system (in this case launchd) will
noticed that something has touched the socket (in this case, your
command trying to connect to the Xserver) and will start the Xserver
for you if it is not already running. If you change DISPLAY to be :
0 then you'd see the all too familiar, unable to connect to display,
message, unless you manually started the Xserver ahead of time.
It is one of those things that until you actually try it, it is hard
to understand why it is any better. But I found it to be an
enormous time saver as I don't have to remember to manually start
X11, etc. I just fire up Terminal and start using it and the system
just does the right thing and if necessary starts the Xserver for me.
As you point out, if the change is painful, you can still use the
old way of manually starting up everything ahead of time.
In my opinion, this is one of those interoperability things that
makes a hugh stride forward for X11 apps being first-class citizens
on the Mac. Yes, it takes a bit to get used to, but once you have,
I at least don't want to go back (it is painful to go back to Tiger
at work where I have to remember to start X11.app before starting up
for the day).
Also, I notice you talk about using xterm. I tend to use Terminal
which runs without X11 being run. For the way I work, I have always
found xterm to be a hindrance so I use Terminal instead. This may
be some of the wide differences of opinion with the automagic
launching capability of X11 (if you use xterm, then there are few if
any advantages to the new way of using X11, but it is a huge
advantage for those of us that use Terminal).
The current way X11.app is setup, both situations are supported, so
we both get our cakes.
Merle
On Dec 15, 2007, at 6:48 PM, John Koren wrote:
Thanks, Merle. It's either I do not understand your answer or I was
not clear in my question.
What I was trying to ask is why the DISPLAY variable value that
launchd assigns needs to be so obscurely complicated ( e.g. /tmp/
launch-0l2xbx/:0) when setting it to standard ':0' seems to work as
well.
After X11 starts, I can execute in xterm 'setenv DISPLAY :0' (csh)
and pop new X windows as well as with the '/tmp/launch-0l2xbx/:0'
that launchd assigned. Hence what do we gain from the '/tmp/
launch-0l2xbx' prefix?
-John
_/snip/
It is also more secure since part of the DISPLAY value is randomly set
-- a possible intruder cant make any useful assumptions about where
the display socket is.
William Davis
frstanATbellsouthDOTnet
Mac OS X.5.1 Darwin 9.1.0
X11.app 2.1.1 - (xorg-server 1.3.0-apple5)
Mac Mini Intel Duo @ 1.86 GHz
Mundus vult decepi, ego non
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