General

[Chakravarthi]

Hi all,

What is the difference Between the X server and Window Manager, when the Machine hangs, how do i find is it the KDE , GNOME problem or the X server problem,

Some times the Machine hangs, still we'll be able to telnet to the machine. at this stage, how do i restart the X or the window manager with out killing the running processes


any explanation ?

regards
chakri

[Balaji N]

a set of complex questions. so instead of answering them myself, went to google and it does the task pretty nicely.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=%22what+is+a+Window+manager+%22

http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/mithril/anduin/window_manager.html

to find out the problem, you need to check the logs. normally it is the XFree86.0.log which is in /var/log directory. have a look there. see the messages file and if you are able to gather info.


telnet uses the telnet daemon and is independent of the window manager (modular approach). so telnetworks as long as telnetd is running. and if you want to restart X when it has failed, just do a init 3 and init 5.

or if you are on the console, just press Ctrl+Alt+Bkspace (if it is not disabled) and it will kill the X server. You can restart.

hth
-balaji (hungry and running to grab my lunch)

[trystan macdonald_1]

To check the logs, if you are at the machine and the system seems to have hung, you can log in through a virtual console by pressing ctrl+alt+f1. This will take you to virtual console 1. To get back to your normal login type alt+f7.
Trystan.

[Chakravarthi]

i'm using 2.2.14 kernel, i cant find any XF86xxx.log under /var/log/

[Umapathy S]

KDE and GNOME were desktop environments before and for window management (drawing, positioning and mouse handling) they relied on some window managers. Nowadays KDE and GNOME have their own window managers embeded and they directly talk to X/X11 libraries. For
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XFree86, provides a client/server interface between display hardware (the mouse, keyboard, and video displays) and the desktop environment while also providing both the windowing infrastructure and a standardized application interface (API). XFree86 is platform-independent, network-transparent and extensible.
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When a machine hangs there may be several reason for it.
1. CPU will be busy with some other non preemptible routines.
2. The display (essentially window manager) would have hung.
3. X network interface would have broken (if you are exporting the display in a remote machine).

Telnet to the machine and run top to find out whether the machine is running fine. If some process is eating the CPU cycles, then you find the culprit.

If thats fine, then there is a problem with the Desktop unable to trap the inputs(keyboard/mouse). Surely this can point to X11 or Desktop. Check out the /var/log to see any warning in all the logs.

Its a long time since I worked with 2.2.*, so not able to recollect the log file names.

HTH
Umapathy