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From: bob%aargh.cis.ohio-state.edu@osu-eddie.UUCP (Bob Sutterfield)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Periodic X (xterm?) deaths
Message-ID: <3911@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Aug-87 09:55:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.3911
Posted: Thu Aug  6 09:55:54 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Aug-87 12:25:29 EDT
References: <1856@megaron.arizona.edu>
Sender: news@osu-eddie.UUCP
Reply-To: bob@ohio-state.ARPA (Bob Sutterfield)
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer & Information Science
Lines: 35
Keywords: X death cshe autologout
Summary: does your shell autologout?

In article <1856@megaron.arizona.edu> whm@arizona.UUCP (Bill Mitchell) writes:
>... when running xterm on a VAX using a 3.2 Sun as display server,
>everything would occasionally die and I'd end up back at the Sun's
>shell prompt.  There was some speculation that this is due to not
>mousing enough ...  So anyway, I'm still looking for a solution...,
>so if you've got any new ideas, I'm all ears, even for things like
>putting three rings of colored sand around my Sun.

Well, in Ohio we don't use colored sand so much, so we had to find
other possibilities :-).  The not-mousing-enough speculation was mine,
but was inaccurate.  I posted <3802@osu-eddie.uucp> on 14 Jul
describing our results, but perhaps it didn't make it to you.

The cause in our case was a locally popular extended csh that had an
autologout option that was set "on" by default.  If a cshe has no
activity for an hour then it will exit.  For a user on a dumb terminal
this was fine, because it meant he had walked away and forgotten to
log out, and it solved part of the `untamo'-type problem.

However, in a window system where some windows lie fallow for long
periods of time (specifically the console xterm) it wasn't so helpful.
So our solution is for users of cshe to "unset autologout", at least
in the console xterm.  There are a lot fewer frustrated X users around
here now.

I don't know if this will affect you because the csh extensions are
local and you may not have something similar.  But at least in our
case, the cause was not that the user wasn't mousing enough, so you
might want to look elsewhere.  Perhaps colored sand isn't a bad idea -
but be careful of the cooling fan.
-=-
 Bob Sutterfield, Department of Computer and Information Science
 The Ohio State University; 2036 Neil Ave. Columbus OH USA 43210-1277
 bob@ohio-state.{arpa,csnet} or ...!cbosgd!osu-eddie!bob
 soon: bob@aargh.cis.ohio-state.edu