Starting XWin from a portable CD

[Jon TURNEY]

On 13/03/2011 08:56, Fergus wrote:
> I'm running Cygwin-X from a portable device.
> From a write-able stick the start command
> bin\run bin\XWin -nolock -nolisten local -logfile /dev/null -multiwindow &
> works perfectly well. Notice the switch -logfile /dev/null which means the
> file XWin.0.log is not written.
> (Slightly odd I know. The switch -logfile should specify a filename  not a
> directoryname, but it seems to work?)

/dev/null is not a directory

> However using an identical architecture as on the stick, but on a CD, the same
> start command results in
> "Failed to activate core devices".
> So is there something else that needs to be written and cannot be diverted to
> /dev/null (or somewhere write-able).
> Or, if I know what it is, can I divert it or otherwise turn it off?

You didn't attach the XWin output, so I'm guessing here, but during server
startup the mandatory XKB extension needs to invoke xkbcomp to compile the
keymap into a temporary file in /var/lib/xkb/ which it then reads and deletes.

You should be able to confirm that is the case by reading the XWin output, or
running your XWin commmand under strace, in which case you will need to
arrange for /var to be mounted somewhere read/write.

> (Oh woe woe woe. I've lost count of the things that worked so easily on 1.5
> and somehow don't on 1.7, this start command on a portable CD being one of the
> list.)

Whilst I appreciate the therapeutic power of having a whine, this doesn't
really add anything to your email.

-- 
Jon TURNEY
Volunteer Cygwin/X X Server maintainer

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