Preventing X server resets

[Harold L Hunt II]

Peter,

So, if you knew that this was possible with another product, then why 
did you bother asking us if it was possible only to make us look like 
chumps when we said it wasn't?  Now I suppose we will look into it at 
some point in the future.

Harold

Oliver, Peter wrote:
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From:	Harold L Hunt II [SMTP:huntharo@msu.edu]
>>Sent:	Friday, November 15, 2002 7:12 PM
>>To:	cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com
>>Subject:	Re: Preventing X server resets
>>
>>Peter,
>>
>>Let me rephrase your question and ask you if it makes sense:
>>
>>``If I am talking on the phone to my mother and she unplugs her phone, 
>>can I just continue talking to her?''
>>
> 
> Yes, but if Dad is on the other extension at the same time I would expect to
> be able to continue talking to him :-)
> 
> Perhaps I wasn't clear in my question.  I know that if a machine is rebooted
> then any X clients running on it will be lost.  As an aside, I also know
> that if a machine running an X server is rebooted then the server is lost,
> and there's typically no way to tell the clients where to reconnect to; the
> RandR extension will apparently change this in the future.
> 
> However, I have X clients running on many machines and all displaying on the
> same server.  If most of these hosts go down then the clients on that host
> are lost, but the X server keeps running and the other clients are
> unaffected.  If the host I logged into with XDMCP goes down, the X server
> resets and kicks off all the other clients which are otherwise fine.  It's
> this behavior that I wish to avoid.
> 
> 
>>The answer is no.  You have established a connection with a server that 
>>is supposed to manage your X session... if that server fails, or if the 
>>connection to it is unreliable, then you X Session is terminated. 
>> Unfortunately, the way the system is designed is that applications you 
>>launch from your X session are managed by the remote XDMCP machine... if 
>>that machine goes down there is no way to transfer control of those 
>>applications to another machine.
>>
> 
> I don't believe that this is true.  As I understand it, X11 clients connect
> directly to the X11 server.  Checking with netstat, I see that there are no
> connections between the host that I logged into with XDMCP and another host
> running an xterm.
> 
> I know that what I asked is possible in general, since an X server called
> PC-Xware does it.  When XDMCP goes away it asks something like "Your XDM
> session has ended.  Would you like to reset the X server?", and if you say
> no you can just carry on working.  I hoped that I'd be able to do the same
> thing with XFree86.
> 
> 
>>3) If you can't do anything about the machine or the network, then you 
>>need to adjust your quality-of-service expectations.
>>
> 
> Perhaps this is the best suggestion.  I can usually run a session for weeks
> or months without incident, so perhaps I'm asking too much :-)
> 
> Alternatively, it occurs to me that I could start my session using rlogin
> rather than XDMCP.  Fiddly, but it should do the trick.
>