drh@notecnirp.Princeton.EDU (Dave Hanson) (09/21/89)
we've just installed ~50 NCD X windows terminals all connected to a VAX 8650. we use xdm to manage sessions. we have two problems. 1. xdm isn't up to the job; e.g., cycling power confuses xdm, and manual initiation of X clients interferes with the xdm session. 2. the xterm's swamp the 8650. with ~70 xterm processes, our load average shoots to ~25. most users need only a fraction of xterm's features; a simpler terminal emulator would be useful. anyone else running similar configurations or have suggestions? (we're getting some DEC mips boxes, which will help distribute the load.) replies to drh@princeton.edu. thanx.
rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler) (09/22/89)
1. xdm isn't up to the job; e.g., cycling power confuses xdm, and
manual initiation of X clients interferes with the xdm session.
Perhaps you could be a lot more specific about these problems (at least
in a bug report to xbugs)? Things aren't likely to get fixed unless we
understand how they're broken.
2. the xterm's swamp the 8650. with ~70 xterm processes, our load
average shoots to ~25. most users need only a fraction of xterm's
features; a simpler terminal emulator would be useful.
What exactly is swamping the system? Not enough CPU cycles, or paging
to death, or what? Having lots of features in a xterm, whose text
space is shared among all processes, doesn't sound like it should a priori
be a problem. In what way would a "simpler" client be useful?