problems running Xwindows

[Darren MacKenzie]

I'm having a problem where a user's session goes into a continuous crash/restart. It seems to get started during a copy/paste in X:

Warning:
Name: Copy
Class: XmPushButtonGadget
Illegal mnemonic character; Could not convert X KEYSYM to a keycode

Warning:
Name: Paste
Class: XmPushButtonGadget
Illegal mnemonic character; Could not convert X KEYSYM to a keycode

Somebody noted "KBRC00011073" in the 'databases' forum...is that a patch?

This is happening on a recent user migration from 10.20 to 11i. I unfortunately didn't do the upgrade, but it almost seems like either a patch is missing or a patch was added that shouldn't have been.

Any help would be appreciated...

[Alex Glennie]

KBRC00011073 is a knowledge base document you would be allowed to view once logged in via the maintenace and support link to the left. You would need a s/w support contract linked into your login I beleive or if you raised a call with HP support.

Alternative is to swremove the latest Motif patch PHSS_27425 perhaps or later depending on your swlist -l fileset out ...

or drop me an email ... see my forums profile

[Steven E. Protter]

KBRC00011073 is an HP document that is apparently not available to us mere mortals that don't work at HP.

Here is something that matched a keyword search I ran in knowledgbase.

http://www2.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/docDisplay.do?docLocale=en_US&docId=200000067418455

http://www2.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/docDisplay.do?docLocale=en_US&docId=200000063595916

http://search.hp.com/redirect.html?url=http%3A//forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x01e6d211e18ad5118ff10090279cd0f9,00.html&qt=KEYSYM+%2BIllegal+%2Bmnemonic+%2Bcharacter&hit=1

http://search.hp.com/redirect.html?url=http%3A//forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x568fe3ed7640d71190080090279cd0f9,00.html&qt=KEYSYM+%2BIllegal+%2Bmnemonic+%2Bcharacter&hit=2

This should be a little more useful to you.

SEP

[Darren MacKenzie]

It is indeed being (occasionally) accessed via Reflection/X, so that may be a problem.

I'll also look into that patch in swlist.

Thanks.

[Rick Beldin]

This message:

Warning:
Name: Copy
Class: XmPushButtonGadget
Illegal mnemonic character; Could not convert X KEYSYM to a keycode

is a *warning* not an error. It indicates that your program has a mneumonic (similar to an accelerator, a keyboard shortcut to a menu) that is mapped to a key that does not exist on your current Xserver.

You mention Reflections/X - I would suspect that if you did some correlation that you would find that the problem occurs when displaying the application on one type of display device vs another. You might want to investigate this correlation.

I don't think that patches have anything to do with the message.

[Darren MacKenzie]

After checking back in with the user yesterday, he said that he is actually on the console when X goes down. He's editing a grahic in some kind of CAD program. No core file is generated, and the /var/dt/Xerrors log is of size 0.

So Ref/X isn't the problem with this one.

The messages (warnings) listed are literally the ONLY thing that I can find that gets generated in a log file when X goes down.

He's running CDE on the console. When it crashes, it shuts down X and kicks him back to the login prompt. From that point on, X won't start unless you reboot the machine.

Ideas?

[Steven E. Protter]

1) check that the DISPLAY variable is properly set in the user .profile and that the application doesn't mess with it.

2) Check with the application vendor, sounds like a bad app.

SEP

[Rick Beldin]

If the Xserver is dying, then try:

touch /core
chmod 666 /core

Then have the user reproduce the problem. Once the problem is reproduced:

file /core

/opt/langtools/bin/gdb -xdb /usr/bin/X11/Xhp /core
(gdb) bt

If you don't have Xhp, then use X as the program name.

swlist -l product | grep Xserver

To find out your Xserver patch level.

[Darren MacKenzie]

If it was the DISPLAY variable, it would be happening all over the place, as this program is running on numerous machines.

I tried the 'touch /core' yesterday, and X crashed last night. I checked for the file this morning, and it was gone. Any reason it would get removed? The user had no knowledge of it, so they wouldn't have removed it.

[Rick Beldin]

The reason to touch /core is that the Xserver runs as daemon, who shares root's home directory, but has no permissions to write there.
If you hadn't touched it before, daemon would not be able to dump core there.

Check the Xserver patch level. If you are more than a year old, I would recommend installing patches before continuing.

You can also verify the type of graphics card you have installed by doing:

/opt/graphics/common/bin/graphinfo | grep -i product

[Russ Park]

As to your loss of the core file, you should check your crontab file. Many sysadmins leave the standard core cleanup cron in the root crontab file. It is usually some sort of find command searching for core files and removing them. If this is the case, your core will only last until your next cron event that deletes them.

-RP