Strange Behaviour CDE Front Panel

[bill-clayton]

Recently I was able to successfully get CDE remoted to a Linux VM running under Windows XP. My HP computer is running HPUX 11.0 and has no graphics card.
When CDE login is achieved I see three windows on screen:1) Front Panel, 2) Helpview with Desktop subject displayed, and 3)a file manager window set to home dir.
If I click in any of the first two windows, all works fine. For example I can drill down into dirs and see files displayed, or click on a help subject and go to it.
When I click, or try to click, anywhere on the Front Panel, the mouse will continue to move, but nothing is clickable anymore, including the two windows I was just using. To recover,I must power off the VM running Linux and start over, but I continue to get the same result.
Does anyone know why this may happen. I must say that the Front Panel does not look quite right, there is really no depth definition to any icons -- sort of like a grayed out menu item. However when I try to click on it, mouse clicks no longer function for nay window.
Is it a focus problem? Is there something wrong with a font that could be causing it?
By the way /var/dt Xerrors shows four (4) times the following:

/usr/bin/X11/xset: bad font path element (#23), possible causes are:...
(this time 4 times)
Current font path is now set to: /etc/dt/config/xfonts/C
Completed xset to remote DISPLAY"

How do I find out what font element #23 is?
Could that really be the Front Panel problem?

[Michael Steele_2]

Please take screen dumps of each and attach

[Matti_Kurkela]

> How do I find out what font element #23 is?

Run "xset q" to see the current font path (and other basic X server settings).

The font path is basically a comma-separated list of font servers and/or font directories. The directory entries refer to the host that is running the X server (probably your Linux VM, in your case).

It seems something is changing your font path after the error messages. You should try and find out what the font path is before the "Current font path is now set to..." message, and then count its elements to find the 23rd one.

[problem with window focus/clickability]

Normally, each X server has exactly one application running that draws all the window frames and controls the keyboard and mouse focus. This is called "the window manager". On HP-UX CDE, the window manager is mwm, the Motif window manager; on Linux, there are many alternatives (the window manager KDE or Gnome desktop environment, or any of the other "lighter" window managers).

The important thing is, trying to run two window managers on the same X display does not always end well: with Linux window managers, starting a new window manager sometimes causes the old one to be automatically killed (causing the frames of all the existing windows to revert to thin black lines and then immediately re-drawn with the style used by the new window manager).

But when you're running a remote CDE, the "extra" window manager is running on another host, so the usual protection against two simultaneous window managers might not work, and the two window managers might end up conflicting with each other. This is why you usually have to take special steps like using a "nested" X server (Xnest, Xephyr) if you want to run a full remote CDE session within another X desktop environment.

I cannot test right now, but I might be able to post some tested example command lines for starting a full CDE session within a Linux desktop later today.

MK

[bill-clayton]

Thanks for the info. I think I should be able to find and resolve the font problem now.
I also understand what you are saying about the X window manager. I am not running X windows on my Linux box. I am logging into a text based console and then using XDMCP (is that right) to get everything from the HPUX computer -- like this:
From Linux

X -query HPUX_IP -fp tcp/HPUX-IP:7000

This starts X from HPUX and gives me a font server also. I have read many things about Xnest and believe it would be great fro nested X servers. I don't have it and don't know where I could get it for HPUX 11.0 (32 bit). Is that where I need it, or on my Linux computer>

[Matti_Kurkela]

Your command line for starting the CDE session from the text console is a good starting point for using Xnest/Xephyr too.

Xnest is essentially just a X proxy, but Xephyr is a full-fledged X server, so it can support XDMCP and independent font paths.
You should run Xephyr on your local Linux host: it opens one window which acts as a "desktop" for the remote CDE session. Xephyr uses shared memory to communicate with your local Linux X server, so Xephyr may have to be started as root.

Start a normal GUI session on your Linux workstation, then open a terminal window, become root and try this:

linux# Xephyr -query HPUX_IP -fp tcp/HPUX-IP:7000

You may want to add other options to Xephyr to specify the desired size of the CDE window (it is not resizable). See "man xephyr", "man Xserver".

MK

[bill-clayton]

So I should find Xephyr and I can use it to remote the CDE desktop to an X window in Linux. Do I understand that correctly?

At any rate I appreciate your help. I now have CDE running to the max. This is what I had to do to fix the no-focus problem for the Front Panel:

cp /usr/dt/app-defaults/C/Dtwm /etc.dt/app-defaults/C/Dtwm
Edit Dtwm to add one line that reads:
Dtwm*keyboardFocusPolicy pointer

Then I started CDE via X -query ...
from a Linux text login console and everything now works fine -- well almost.

I still seem to have two problems:
1) If I start a terminal in CDE, it acts really wierd. I believe it should be a dtterm, but many terminal commands are not found -- like "ls" for example. What's with that. Anyway I found a way to make the default terminal an xterm, but I get the same result. Many of the commands are not found.

2) If I go into System Tools and try to start SAM, CDE puts it in a 'backdrop' and I find an icon for it, but cannot start SAM. Can I use SAM from CDE in the way I have it all remoted or not. I know that if I simply have no CDE remoted, but just the DISPLAY frpm HPUX remoted to Linux, I can run SAM ok, because I have done it many times. As a matter of fact I can run any X app this way, but evidently not through CDE -- bummer!!!

[Dennis Handly]

>1) If I start a terminal in CDE, many commands are not found - like "ls"

What does "echo $PATH" show? It is likely your .profile isn't being sourced. See these threads:
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/System-Administration/Execute-etc-profile-during-CDE-login/m-p/4516315#M366463
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/General/CDE-Login-dtprofile-and-profile/m-p/2521393#M14686

[bill-clayton]

OK folks, I think I have all my problems solved. I now even connect to CDE from Linux running X via Xephyr (X server within an X server)
The command I use to connect via XDMCP protocol is:
Xephyr -screen 960x540 -query hpux_IP -fp tcp/hpux_IP:7000 :2 &
Of course the hpux computer's DISPLAY=Linux_IP:2.0 and the Linux computer is st up for xhost +hpux_IP.

The problems with xterm not running under CDE and many shell commands like "ls" not being found was because of PATH problems.
I cheated and went into /usr/dt/bin/Xsession and set a good PATH variable near the beginning so everyone could use it. I suppose I could have done the same in ~/.dt/Xsession for each user, but I wanted a global usage. I just have to keep an eye on the Xsession file if it is ever reloaded.

Now everything works fine! I can run CDE from a Linux text console login shell or from an X-window in Linux. Thanks for everyone's help!