problem with chooser (or xdm, or X ?) on sparc-debian.

[Dinh-Tuan.Pham@imag.fr]

	Hi,
	I have install sparc-debian on a small Sun machine (IPC) and
configure it as an X terminal. Specifically I have a script with
launches this command at boot

/usr/X11R6/bin/X -indirect `hostname`

This would create an XDMCP hosts menu on the X screen from which I can
choose the host to login in the same way as a X terminal.

I have noticed that quite often, after selecting the host (by a double
click or by clicking on the accept button, the menu just disappear
and reappears some time later, without giving the user any opportunity 
to login. But another trial or several another trials would end up
giving me the xdm login screen.

Recently, looking closely at this problem, I have noticed that each
time this happens, I have a zombie chooser process listed by ps, like
this

root 274  0.0  0.0     0     0  ?  Z  16:18   0:02 chooser <zombie>

Therefore I infer that the chooser process which manages the XDMCP
hosts menu has died and the xdm has launch another chooser, since I
also see a living chooser process listed by xdm:

root 294  0.0  8.4  3996  1860  ?  S  18:41   0:01 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/chooser -xdmaddress 00020400815821

But why it is dead remains a mystery. Is it the fault of the chooser or
of xdm or of X ? And is it because the connection (to the host I have
selected) fails or because of this, the connection fails ?

I would like to know if any one has had this kind of problem, and
further if some debian-developper can look at it and find a solution.

The problem is real because I have seen it happens many times, but it
kind of unreproducible. It is at the least annoying because one might
need to make many trial to get to the xdm login screen. Furtther,
after several days I could have more than 10 zombie chooser and this
seems to slowdown the machine. So what I have done is to restart xdm
every week or so. This is the only way I have found (sort of
rebooting) to get rid of the zombie, kill -9 dosn't work at all (why ?).

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PHAM Dinh Tuan                         | e-mail: Dinh-Tuan.Pham@imag.fr
Laboratoire de Modelisation et Calcul  | Tel: +33 4 76 51 44 23
BP 53, 38041 Grenoble cedex (France)   | Fax: +33 4 76 63 12 63
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