GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 337670
gdm kills Xserver (Xgl) before it has time to start
Last modified: 2006-04-14 18:15:43 UTC
Please describe the problem: Xgl takes longer to start up than standard X servers. Gdm is hardcoded to kill Xservers if they take longer than 10 seconds to start (using the SERVER_WAIT_ALARM variable in daemon/server.c). What would be preferable is that gdm reads this timeout value from the config file instead of having it being hardcoded. The attached patch does this. Steps to reproduce: 1. Set up gdm to use the Xgl server instead of the regular X server 2. Start gdm Actual results: Gdm begins starting the Xgl server, a grey screen with the hourglass symbol appears. Before Xgl has a chance to load, The screen goes black. This sequence happens 3 times before gdm exits and claims the Xserver failed to start. Expected results: gdm would allow Xgl enough time to start, and start properly. Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information:
Created attachment 62950 [details] [review] Moves Xserver timeout configuration into gdm.conf This patch replaces the hardcoded "SERVER_WAIT_ALARM" variable in daemon/server.c with a value loaded at runtime from the config file. The new variable is called "GdmXserverTimeout" in the config file. This is my first gdm patch so I hope I didn't forget anything. I added the appropriate info to: gdm.conf.in, gdm.h, and docs/C/gdm.xml.
(In reply to comment #1) Sorry, I forgot to mention that the patch doesn't change the default value (10), it just allows it to be modified using the config file so folks using alternative Xservers can modify it if they wish.
Thank you Emilie, the patch is very well written. Thank you for following the instructions about adding a new config variable in daemon/gdm.h - providing the docs/C/gdm.xml patch is often something I need to remind people. I have applied this patch to GDM so it will be included in GDM 2.14.1 next week. I did not apply the patch to the gdm.xml file yet because we are past string freeze. I am leaving this bug open to remind me to apply the docs part of this patch after brancing for 2.15.
This is fixed, marking as such.