Problems with xdm and SCO Unix

[Marc Unangst]

It seems that the version of xdm(1) that SCO supplies with ODT is a
bit buggy with regards to the screen-handling code.  Whenever a copy
of xdm starts up, the entire screen gets shifted around 40 characters
to the right, so the "beginning" of the line starts at around
                                        column 40, and it ends up wrapping aro
und the screen so it looks
                                        like this.

But wait, there's more!  If you have the virtual tty that xdm is
starting up on selected as it initializes, you see part of a ps(1)
listing for a few seconds.  You sometimes also get some colored bars
at the bottom of the screen.

That's not all!  When xdm is killed (with regular old "kill <pid>"),
the entire screen shifts up around 3 lines.  If you press <return>,
the screen is redrawn in the correct position, but it really gets
annoying.

As if that wasn't enough, xdm apparantly doesn't work correctly with
the SecureWare security product that SCO gives you with ODT -- for
instance, you can log on through xdm even if you have an expired
password.  And after you're logged in, you don't show up in /etc/utmp
or /etc/wtmp.

Maybe SCO will get their X11R3 perfected by the time MIT has X11R5
ready.  Oh well.


--
Marc Unangst               |
mju at mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us  | "Bus error: passengers dumped"
...!umich!leebai!mudos!mju |