X Server Dying

[Scott Holt]

In article <5973 at mace.cc.purdue.edu> lzm at mace.cc.purdue.edu (Chris McCoy) writes:
>
>I've been experiencing problems with the X server dying and locking
>my console.  Typically, this happens when communicating with remote
>hosts, but recently when I installed FrameMaker 2.0, it happens
>quite often.  When I run FrameMaker and try to perform any operation
>on a document or its associated window, the X server dies and I'm
>hosed.  It runs fine on our Xstation, SUN SPARCstation, and Zenith
>(Frame binary on the IBM).
>
>Has anyone else experienced this type of problem?  If anyone has FrameMaker
>running, I'd *really* be interested in hearing from you.  I'm convinced
>the problem lies with the X server on the IBM, but I don't have enough
>fuel on this problem.


Well, there are ways to get fuel. First - when your server hangs, find
some other route into the system (rlogin, tty) try to force the X server
to dump core. Certain signals will do this. You may also find that sending
a HUP to the server will cause it to die gracefully - as though you had
shut it down. You may also want to force FrameMaker to give a core dump and
send that off to Frame.

Second, you may find certain xmonitor programs useful. Generate a trace of 
all the events up to the failure, print it off and let IBM and Frame chew on 
it. I managed to get xmon to do a nice job of this.

I have had similar problems with the X server running on an 8-bit color
system. I have, however, been able to run Frame 2.1x as a client (from a
remote sparc) with no problem. My problem happened when using Oracle's
CASE*Designer as a remote client. I am fairly certain that its the X
server, not CASE*Designer, that is the problem - the application runs fine
on at least 3 other servers we have tried. I have packaged up an event 
trace and a core dump of the server to send off to IBM.

- Scott
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Scott Holt                 		Internet: scott at prism.gatech.edu
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