problems with XFree

[Tom Bozack]

I think Cygwin/XFree86 is a great product  -- but there is nothing so 
good that it can't be improved.  I agree with all of you comments, 
although I haven't had the system reboot experience.

One persistant problem that you didn't mention (manybe you haven't run 
into it yet) is a very persistent and repeatable lock-up when used to 
login to another host using XDMCP.  The symptom is of a sudden large 
memory leak after 15-30 minutes of use.  XFree86 becomes unresponsive, 
system memory and swap resources are rapidly used up, and finally 
XFree86 crashes with a seg fault.  This also happens immediately (you 
don't have to wait 15-30 min) when you logoff the host and login again. 
  I've experienced this under Windows 98/98SE/ME.

For me this is a showstopper since it makes Cygwin/XFree86 unusable as 
an X server platform.  It's fun to play with, but this "bug" makes it 
unacceptable for routine use as an X server.

Tom

gsroka@mmsa.com wrote:
> (last email I sent complained about HTML MIME. i hope i'm not 
> double-posting)
> 
> I started playing with XFree last week. It's been a few years since I've 
> used UNIX, so you can call me a newbie, if you like. I'm running Windows 
> 2000 Pro on a P4 1.7 GHz with 768 MiB of RAM and 10 GB free on my hard 
> drive. I (eventually) did a full Cygwin/XFree86 download and install 
> (binaries, not source).
> 
> Please don't flame me if I'm out of line. I didn't know if I should break 
> this up into several emails or have one big one. Also, please send 
> responses to me by email.
> 
> Here are my obervations/problems.
> Showstoppers:
> 1) The very first time I brought up the X server, I had modified 
> startxwin.bat 
> to use wmaker instead of twm. It crashed because /home 
> hadn't been created yet. This was "fixed" by running the text-mode bash 
> icon first.
> 2) when I run Xman, it says "No App-Defaults File". If I run "Xman -notop" 
> 
> instead, I can browse one man page, and then it stops working. (it gives a 
> 
> "likeToSave" message box with yes and no buttons that don't seem to do 
> anything.) It seems to be related to missing a locale binary. Is there a 
> way to get this to work? 
> 3) within the first few hours of usage, I ran a "find / -name abc -print" 
> from the command-line, and my trusty Windows 2000 box restarted. no blue 
> screen, no error. it was like someone pulled the power plug and plugged it 
> 
> back in. after it came up, i tried the same command and it worked fine.
> 4) i had a similar "restart" to #6 when I ran setup.exe while cygwin was 
> up. of course, bad user, i should have stopped cygwin before running 
> setup, but i'm still amazed at how easily my robust kernel, based on NT 
> Technology, came down.
> 
> Nice-to-haves:
> 5) it'd be nice if setup.exe showed the size (in bytes or megabytes, etc.) 
> 
> of each package (it's in setup.ini). on my 56 Kb/s modem, downloading a 
> large, unnecessary file takes a painfully long time, but a small 
> unnecessary file is not so bad.
> 6) on that note, how about displaying those nice descriptions from 
> setup.ini in setup.exe so we can see what the packages are before 
> downloading them. a resizable window would come in handy for this.
> 7) the first time I downloaded (a partial download, not full), i picked 
> "more" and "clear", but next time I went into setup.exe, it had 
> "forgotten" that. perhaps if I can unrust my C, I can fix some of these 
> bugs myself. give me a few weeks.
> 8) the XFree86-fnts package is 16 MiB. it's kind of big. the first time i 
> downloaded from http:uiuc, it got 98% and stopped responding--1 hour 
> wasted (at 56 Kb). the second time (no joke) it got 99% and 
> stopped--another hour wasted. so i copied it from somewhere else.
> 9) my X clients on an AIX box didn't work because i didn't use the -kb 
> switch on XWin. but i found that one on the faq. a possible enhancement to 
> 
> setup.exe?
> 10) using K (or Ki) and B for byte on setup.exe is always nice. make sure 
> to leave a space between the number and the unit. 10 KB, not 10KB. how 
> about estimated download time in addition to % ?
> 11) also, what's all that /b stuff about in startxwin.bat? gotos, etc. but 
> 
> there is no /b ! (there is no spoon either ;-)
> 
> 
> Please no one take offense at all this. I'm not trying to throw blame. It 
> seems like a great product, so far (except for the deadly restarts). These 
> 
> are perhaps suggestions for doing it better. I know some coworkers who 
> tried to get this to work, but gave up because of the problems. So will 
> the average newbie or the busy IT pro who doesn't have time to read lots 
> of faqs and will buy Exceed instead. I hope my observations will help 
> others.
> 
> Gabriel Sroka
> gsroka at mmsa dot com
>