From: gowen@jade.tufts.edu (G. Lee Owen)
Subject: XDM, Xkernel, and olwm
Lines: 33
Organization: Tufts University - Medford, MA
Distribution: na


	Greetings,
	We have a network of ~20 Sun Workstations, running SunOS 4.1.1
and Openwindows 3.  7 of these are Sun 3's that we have modified to
run Seth Robertson's xkernel image, effectively turning them into
xterminals.  We use xdm (X11R4) to manage the displays.

	When we had 3 xkernel machines, things worked fine, but when
we installed 4 more last weekend, we appear to have found a weakness.
With 7 clients to 1 Sparc 2, the Sparc 2 window manager is eventually
getting munged.  

	Let me try to be precise:  The user sitting at the machine
that does all the actual processing for these xterminals is having
control of his keyboard and screen yanked away.  (When this was the
department chair, it was kind of cute).  We poked at xdm for a few
days and are satisfied that it is not at fault.  Our current theory is
that olwm (the Sun version) was not meant for running multiple copies
on one machine (which is what happens -- the console user runs olwm,
and every xterminal logged in has olwm running on the xterminal
server). 

	Has anyone had any prior experience with this sort of behavior?
	Can anyone shoot obvious holes in this theory?
	How about obvious gimmes?
	And, of course, any ideas on how to solve it?

	Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

  Greg Owen  { gowen@forte.cs.tufts.edu, gowen@jade.tufts.edu }
Systems Programmer and TA, Tufts University Computer Science Dept.
  Personal info: GCS/GO d++ -p+ c+++ m*/m- s++/- g+ w+/w-- x+
  email for explanation if interested...
