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From: mouse@lightning.mcrcim.mcgill.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  "Broken Pipe" on X Server Connection
Message-ID: <9102011354.AA00476@lightning.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 1 Feb 91 13:54:49 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 31

> I am sometimes bothered by my X client mysteriously terminating with
> a "broken pipe" signal, apparently arising out of the X server socket
> connection.  It seems to happen when my client has sent an
> appreciable number of requests to the server and has not taken the
> time to read the server's responses.

This is a bug - it should either work or hang.  I have seen R3 servers
drop the connection when this happens; perhaps your server is R3-based?
(You don't say whose server you're using.)  When the connection to the
client cannot accept more data, the server is supposed to just queue
things internally.  It is permitted to stop reading from the client
when this happens, which can cause the client to freeze....

> But it does not happen consistently -- sometimes everything will
> work, sometimes the client dies.

I suspect it depends on how many other events (keyboard presses, mouse
motions, etc) are queued up as well.

> I'm not sure that I understand what is happening here, and -- more
> important -- I'm not sure what the best way is to prevent this from
> happening.

The best way, I would guess, is to be a good little client and pay
attention to what the server is trying to say to you, even if this
means just reading it and throwing it away.

					der Mouse

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