Can't read lock file

[Jon TURNEY]

On 11/11/2009 07:40, Fergus wrote:
> I have made no alterations/ patches/ amendments and have a completely
> current [1.7] system.
>
> For all of
> cygwin1.7.61.dll - cygwin1.7.64.dll
> the command
> run XWin
> fails with a reference to /vat/log/XWin.0.log which reads
> Can't read lock file /tmp/.X0.lock
>
> But when reverting to
> cygwin1.7.60.dll
> everything goes ahead smoothly and correctly and I can start a X
> terminal etc.
>
> Q1. Is it still the case that this problem is "not well understood" as
> in this reference?
> http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/cygwin-x-faq.html#q-cant-read-lock-file
>
> (My experiments with possible cause/ cure are confounded because on
> Machine 1 I have NTFS filesystems but lack administrator rights and on
> Machine 2 where I am Administrator, all filesystems are FAT32.)

Perhaps this FAQ needs a bit of clarification.

Creating the lockfile will fail if /tmp is on a FAT32 filesystem, for the 
reasons outlined in Corinna's email. (although I guess this may have behaved 
differently in some 1.7.x beta version if you haven't seen it there)

For reasons which I don't currently understand, creating the lockfile also 
reportedly fails sometimes for people who have /tmp on a NTFS filesystem.

If you can contribute some information which might help in solving this 
problem, please do so at [1]

[1] http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=9778

> Q2. Is there anything obvious in the progression from cygwin1.7.60.dll
> to cygwin1.7.61.dll that might explain why the start command run XWin
> works with 1.7.60 and fails with 1.7.61?
>
> Finally
>
> Q3. Confession: I am completely confused by all recent posts about LANG,
> locale and all the rest. Are fiddling with LANG or applying patches such
> as described at
> http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2009-11/msg00071.html
> fixes intended to address problems starting XWin?

If you are not setting LANG (or are setting it to C.UTF-8) and have 
xorg-server-1.7.1-2, you will probably experience random crashes in 
multiwindow mode)

Until there is a new libX11 release, if you are experiencing such crashes, 
applying that patch in that email OR setting LANG to something more sensible 
(e.g. en_GB.UTF-8) should resolve that problem.

>
> Thank you.
>
> Fergus
>
> PS Not quite "finally". Can I please ask a 4th question:
>
> Q4 Why are questions about X specifically directed to a different
> mailing list? Apart from occasional high-frequency dialogue as at
> present, posts about X are (or seem to me to be) no more frequent than
> posts about grep or ls or chmod or ... . The "main" Cygwin list has a
> much higher readership and posts directed there might generate many
> useful hints, tips, experiences, fixes or even solutions?

I am lazy and don't read the main list :-)

-- 
Jon TURNEY
Volunteer Cygwin/X X Server maintainer

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