Unable to use X session under cygwin 1.3.11-3 on NT 4.0 sp. 6

dct-linuq@iquebec.com dct-linuq@iquebec.com
Thu Jun 27 14:12:00 GMT 2002


Problem solved !!!,

Thanks to van Putte, Wolfhagen, Habacker et al. that
had already discussed the matter under a different
title.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

A hint for those who, like me, do not know much about
this stuff check for error beyond X and into xterm
behaviour:

1- Step to diagnostic

The new version of cygwin 1.3.11 (try cygcheck -s |
grep "cygwin" to see the cygwin version) there is
some change in the implementation of the security
(that among other thing do not permit you to open
xterm sessions).  You must adjust your system
consequently by defining a "real" user and not some
kind of Administrator (before I was Administrateur
and now daniel (my real login name)).

To diagnose my problem I added the "-hold" option to
the command xterm (xterm -hold &)in my startup
scripts (startxwin.sh and .xinitrc). That's when I
realised that it was a Permission problem and not an
X problem.  

2- X and xterm related problems and cygwin security

To redefine users see the thread this month :
-> xterm fails to start with "setuid failed:
Permission denied"
and the mkpasswd command.  Basically what it does it
to make a new password file with users and network
information.  Cygwin uses it for the login. 
Attention!!! Watch for big network, the file could
end up very long.  Here is what I did :
mkpasswd -l > /etc/passwd
mkpasswd -d | grep "daniel" >> /etc/passwd
(I knew my login name to be daniel)
And voila, I am now daniel@mymachine and no longuer
Administrateur@mymachine.  And the best of it xterm
now works (after some tweeking, read on).

3- Tweeking scripts for optimum functionning
When I finally got my X working (with the steps
outlined above), I had to add "-e /usr/bin/bash" to
the xterm command in my startup scripts (xterm -e
/usr/bin/bash &) because it could not find bash in
/bin/bash (thanks to -hold option for the hint).  I
also added an alias to my .bashrc "alias xterm='xterm
-e /usr/bin/bash'.

Thanks again all,

Hope this will be useful and good luck to others

DCT



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