Cygwin X11 Server slow performance

[Marco Atzeri]

On 4/30/2018 6:48 AM, Paul Sheer wrote:
>>
>> Cygwin/X is most definitely being used, and this might help:
>>
>> https://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/using-shared-memory.html
>>
> 
> 
> Being used? I find that very difficult to believe.
> 
> There are a large number of usability problems I have found and I have only
> been using Cygwin for a couple of hours. It's does not seem ready for
> release yet IMO.

as we are using by more than one decade
and the first 64 bit version was released in 2009

https://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin-announce/2009-12/msg00027.html

we are sure that it is usable.


> 1. There seems no way to map particular important keys. For instance
> Left-Alt-Tab should be configurable to either Windows or X11 depending
> on the users preference, and this configuration should be available in a menu
> somewhere easy to find -- but it has no configuration menus on the top bar
> like normal applications.
> 
> 2. it is extremely difficult to work out that
> "C:\cygwin64\bin>XWin.exe -ac -listen tcp" is the appropriate command
> to type to get the server to serve a remote Linux machine. This seems
> like a common use case -- so why "hide" this information?

It is not hidden.
It is an upstream setting, we are just using the default.

> 3. Forgets that you have your mouse button held down if you drag past
> the edge of the X screen. It should not let your mouse cursor out the
> X screen when you are dragging.
> 
> 4. Is there no option like XWin.exe -ac -listen 10.12.21.0/24 to
> restrict connections to a particular network?? This seems very easy to
> implement and solves the security problem. It might be in a menu also.
> 
> 5. The performance issue is not related to the shared memory problem.
> My text editor has multiple ways of rendering 8x13bold (font-struct font-set and
> pixmap) and they are all slow. XMing is also slow (I have notified
> Colin Harrison
> but even after a year he cant fix it).

Than probably something on your machine is interfering.
It will be difficult to debug without further info from your side.

> This latency may be because you are not using Windows accelerated
> rectangle copies, or it may be because you have not disabled the
> Nagle algorithm for latency.
> 
> 
> 6. cygserver-config does not work. It gives:

It works. You just seems to have the wrong expectation.


> 
> [[[
> 
> psheer@psheer-HP ~
> $ cygserver-config
> Overwrite existing /etc/cygserver.conf file? (yes/no) yes
> Generating /etc/cygserver.conf file
> chown: changing ownership of '/etc/cygserver.conf': Permission denied
> 
> Warning: The following function requires administrator privileges!
> 
> Do you want to install cygserver as service?
> (Say "no" if it's already installed as service) (yes/no) yes
> /usr/bin/cygrunsrv: Given path doesn't point to a valid executable
> Try `/usr/bin/cygrunsrv --help' for more information.
> 
> Installation of cygserver as service failed.  Please check the
> error messages you got.  They might give a clue why it failed.
> 
> A good start is either you don't have administrator privileges
> or a missing cygrunsrv binary.  Please check for both.
> 
> ]]]
> 
> 
> 7. Surely the above program can check if it is a privilege problem
> or not and simply tell you?  Why should I have to read through
> documentation to enable a simple "checkbox" feature when it
> can only be On or Off and there are no other options???
> 
> 8. cygwin seems to have the concept of an administrator, but there
> is no root user or way to switch to a root user using su. If these things
> exist, then they should be there by default and work as default so as
> not to require the user read documentation. Is my default user the
> administrator?  It should be -- it is a home PC. I can't even tell what
> the intended behavior is. It keeps asking me for a password for
> psheer but I have never set a password on this PC.

Windows has the concept of administrator.
Cygwin runs on top of cygwin and lives in that concept.

> 9. There is no package management that works properly. The
> install program setup-x86_64.exe seems to re-download things
> that are already downloaded. It is kludgy and everything is ambiguous.
> It seems unclear what is a label telling you the state, or a button telling
> you to switch to a state. Surely it is easy to make a Gtk or Qt interface
> for this package manager?

May be the package manager is not intuitive for you, but it works.
I do not find the changes from every version of MS Office release
intuitive, and I need to re-learn the interface, but Office works.

> How do you know what a "minimal" set of packages is?

The minimal is the base Category, that is offered as default on first 
installation.

> 
> Do I have to install everything?

Why ? The FAQ recommends against such solution.
https://cygwin.com/faq.html#faq.setup.everything
Just install what you need to use.


> If I install everything does it cache what it has downloaded so
> as not to download everything again?
> 
> Normal windows packages do not require you ask any of these
> questions -- the install interface makes it clear.
> 
> 
> 10. After trying to install more packages I now get: "The procedure
> entry point __memcpy_chk could not be located in the dynamic link
> library cygwin1.dll"

it seems you need to reinstall the last "cygwin" package,
as __memcpy_chk was added in last release.

You probably ran an upgrade with some cygwin process still
running and the cygwin1.dll was not properly update.

> 11. Surely the Start menu should have a cygwin-packages menu
> item to manage package, get dependencies correct, and verify
> the integrity of an installation.
> 
> 12. Your documentation is extremely strange. For instance
> you have "https://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/using-clipboard-integration.html".
> Why would any user ever read about clipboard integration???
> The clipboard problems and the relationship between X11 and Windows
> have been solved many years ago. This is evident from the fact that
> Ubuntu, when installed under Oracle Virtual box, does Copy-n-Paste between
> Gtk and Windows and Unicode copy-paste even works perfectly
> in both directions. So copy and paste should "just work". Any configuration
> should be in menus anyway.
> 
> 13. Why do some binaries run on the command line and do nothing
> and show no error??? Unix never does this.

You have some broken dependencies as #10.
May be more that just only the cygwin1.dll

If you cripple your Unix installation, also that does not work.

If you provide the cygcheck.out as requested on
http://cygwin.com/problems.html
we could help you.

> I hope this all helps.
> 
> I'll be uninstalling cygwin now because I can't waist any more time on it.

Not very useful for us, and I doubt for you.
But we can help you, starting with the cygcheck.out analysis if you 
provide it.


Regards
Marco








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