fangchin@elaine31.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) (04/06/91)
Hi, I am working on a project at my school's computer center to make all workstations having the same greeting face to users. This involves writing a shell script, I call it x which does all sorts of things for the user, like setting up FONTPATH, MANPATH, checking whether /bin/X is in the user's PATH and whether the user is silly enough to try to run more than one server on one machine etc. A minor problem that I have found out is that IBM, in it's arrogance, didn't even provide xdm client. (correct me if I am wrong). Furthermore, IBM forces RS6000 users to use the by now infamous xinit script (instead of a binary executable) and uses that ackward Cntl-Alt-Bkspc stuff. The console is not much useful without a X on it. Since we have set up xdm for our DECstations, we would like to do the same for RS6000s too. Because I am handling this job, I would like to know if anyone has taken this route already? If so, could someone tell me how straightforward it is? Now I am pretty leery about RS6000's software environment. But no matter what I am going to build xdm on it and never let the ugly 25 lines stuff show up in day light again. But I would be very appreciative if anyone can tell me any problems that were encountered in so doing and get arounds/solutions before I dive in sometime next week. Finally, I also wonder why so many people are willing to put up IBM? It didn't even provide MOST standard X11R4 clients from the core distribution! Not even xkill. Why IBM dares to do this? Just because it's big? I have seen people flame Sun and the like, why IBM can get by doing this kind of silly thing? Unless I am wrong somehow. This is not to say that I don't like the machine. On the contrary, other then the STUPID flickering display in graphic mode, it's a very lively machine with very good float point performance. Nice for medium number crunching jobs. Look forward to hearing any input/thought Regards, Chin Fang Mechanical Engineering Department Stanford University fangchin@leland.stanford.edu
andreess@mrlaxs.mrl.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen) (04/06/91)
In article <1991Apr5.233650.3866@leland.Stanford.EDU> fangchin@elaine31.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) writes: >The console is not much useful without a X on it. Since we have set up xdm >for our DECstations, we would like to do the same for RS6000s too. Because I >am handling this job, I would like to know if anyone has taken this route >already? If so, could someone tell me how straightforward it is? For what it's worth, if you compile the X11R4 distribution with the patches provided by Dan Greening in export.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib, you'll get an xdm binary. As to whether or not it works correctly, I couldn't say. >Finally, I also wonder why so many people are willing to put up IBM? It >didn't even provide MOST standard X11R4 clients from the core distribution! >Not even xkill. Why IBM dares to do this? Just because it's big? I have >seen people flame Sun and the like, why IBM can get by doing this kind of >silly thing? Unless I am wrong somehow. Well, IBM only ships X11R3 so far. And, with Greening's patches all the X11R4 clients seem to work fine. >This is not to say that I don't like the machine. On the contrary, other >then the STUPID flickering display in graphic mode [...] What stupid flickering display? Marc -- Marc Andreessen___________University of Illinois Materials Research Laboratory Internet: andreessen@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu____________Bitnet: andreessen@uiucmrl
frank@leopard.Berkeley.EDU (04/07/91)
Although I don't see xdm, try looking in /usr/lpp/X11/Xamples/clients. You will see xkill among other things. You have to compile them yourself though. - Frank Feuerbacher Disclaimer: I speak only for me! And I don't even do a good job of that!