Re: Horrible X11 Problems on OS X (iBook)
Re: Horrible X11 Problems on OS X (iBook)
- Subject: Re: Horrible X11 Problems on OS X (iBook)
- From: Stephen Sebeny <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 23:49:11 -0500
Hi all,
First let me sincerely thank everyone who responded with suggestions on
(and off) the list. It is certainly appreciated.
Since I got a lot of suggestions, and I didn't want any of the tinkering
around I had previously done to interfere with things I decided to do yet
another clean install before proceeding. I used a 10.3.5 CD set to do a
low-level (zero all data) reformat and clean install (including X11) and the
developer tools. Then immediately ran software update to upgrade to 10.3.7
and all the other updates. At this point everything was in the initial
default configuration -- meaning I've added nothing to any login scripts,
and no ~/.xinitrc exists.
At this point if I launch X11.app I'm greeted with the standard prompt,
and the problem described before still persists. (No output generated for
any command.)
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$ ls
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$
Mat Caughron wrote off-list suggesting it might be a problem with my
PATH environment variable. He asked for the output of running `env | grep
PATH`. Testing both my G4 tower, a machine where everything has always
worked fine, and the iBook in both Terminal.app and X11.app's xterm I see
the following.
Terminal.app on G4 tower:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ssebeny@Quicksilver:~]$ env | grep PATH
PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/Developer/qt/bin:/Users/ssebeny/bin
[ssebeny@Quicksilver:~]$
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
X11.app's xterm on G4 tower:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quicksilver:~ ssebeny$ env | grep PATH
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Users/ssebeny:/usr/X11R6/bin
Quicksilver:~ ssebeny$
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terminal.app on iBook:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$ env | grep PATH
PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
X11.app's xterm on iBook:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$ env | grep PATH
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Scott wrote off-list asking for clarification of whether X11.app
was successfully launching. Indeed it is successfully launching, and in his
words I can see the ugly X icon in the dock. Furthermore it opens an xterm
when it does launch and presents me with a prompt, mentioned above, from
which I can't get any output.
Rich Cook, William Scott, and others responded and suggested that I try
creating a new account and logging into it to see if the same problem was
observed. I created an account called tester, logged into it, and indeed
observed the exact same problematic behavior (no output in xterm). Mr. Cook
suggested that this indicates a global or system-wide problem not something
in the particular user account, and that sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
But then I've been trying to figure this out for months, so I obviously
don't know too much!
Allen Bennett posed the following questions, answered inline.
Q: How much ram do you have?
A: 256 meg. (This is a 1Ghz 7447a G4 iBook - 14", 40gig, Combo.)
Q: What happens when you type startx in a regular terminal window?
A: -bash: startx: command not found
However, earlier when I had used fink to install xfree86 I had used the
startx command then to start that X11 implementation. But that was before
the most recent reformat and clean install.
Q: Is your account an administrator account?
A: The account I primarily use (ssebeny) is indeed an administrator account.
The temporary account (tester) that I mentioned above was a standard account
without administration privileges.
Q: The default shell would be bash what happens when you are in tcsh?
A: Terminal.app on iBook (while X11.app is open/running):
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$ xterm
-bash: xterm: command not found
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$ tcsh
[Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~] ssebeny% xterm
tcsh: xterm: Command not found.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Noah Slater wrote:
> If your xterm is using a default Bash shell and so is Terminal.app
> they will of course share the same history as this information is
> located in ~/.bash_history
Your right, I never realize they shared the same history before. The
observation caught me by surprise and I thought I was observing something
odd.
Regarding Mr. Slater's question about which start-up script the commands
to set the PATH and prompt were from, they were from the ~/.bash_login file.
However, as mentioned above I have done a reformat and reinstall, and I have
not edited any start-up scripts or such files from their initial default
state. And your suggestion about the PATH also occurred to me long ago.
Trying to run a program from its absolute path in the xterm yields no
different results.
X11.app's xterm on iBook:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$ ls
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$ /bin/ls
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Bates and William Scott both made suggestions similar to the
following. (Now we're getting somewhere!)
Terminal.app (with X11.app running) on iBook:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$ DISPLAY=:0.0 xman
-bash: xman: command not found
(This makes since, xman isn't in my PATH for Terminal.app, so I'll try...)
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$ DISPLAY=:0.0 /usr/X11R6/bin/xman
(It worked! It worked! Woweeee!)
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$ DISPLAY=:0.0 /usr/X11R6/bin/xterm -hold
-e ls
(A new xterm appears with the output of the ls, but with no prompt for
further commands.)
Stephen-Sebenys-Computer:~ ssebeny$
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
At this point I'm salivating since it looks like the solution is in
hand. So then I go back to Mr. Scott's e-mail which suggests running `export
DISPLAY=:0.0` in Terminal.app, and then with X11.app open, run `xclock` or
`xterm` in a normal Terminal.app window. Well if I use absolute paths, this
works for xclock, and it will even open an xterm, but then typing commands
into the xterm (like ls) still don't work. (Same symptoms of no output.) Is
there some way to "lock-in" this DISPLAY=:0.0 thing? Should it be in one of
the script files somewhere?
A couple of the e-mails I received off-list were tip-toeing around
asking why I wanted to use an xterm at all instead of just using the normal
terminal. Well, this whole issue arose because I bought this iBook to work
in my school's Solaris environment remotely via VNC. Connecting by VNC works
just fine from my G4 tower or other machines, but on the iBook where this
weird X11 problem is being observed, when opening a VNC session to the
remote Solaris account and opening a terminal/xterm in that remote
environment it exhibits the same weird problem. (Note, this is ONLY when
connected from the iBook.) So, that¹s why I wanted to get this whole
situation resolved on the iBook, so I could work remotely via VNC properly
on the iBook.
So, thanks again to everyone who responded, its truly appreciated. And
hopefully given the details above someone out there will know for sure how
to lock-in the effect of the DISPLAY=:0.0 statement and make its effect
permanent. (fingers-crossed!) Thanks!
-----
Stephen M. Sebeny
email@hidden
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