SUMMARY:Sol 2.5/CDE Problems

From: Lau, Victoria H (vlau@msmail2.hac.com)
Date: Wed May 29 1996 - 22:06:44 CDT


Dear Sun-Managers:

The following is a summary of what I'd learned on CDE which helped me to
solve two of my problems. I think I have to give up on the vision of
displaying the login chooser at the console displays as I still have no
lead in how to make this work.

I'd like to thank Asim Zuberi who responded to my query and suggested that
I should check if the size of my swap space were big enough. Thank you.

My original questions and solutions/comments are a follows:

Problem 1:
---------
>My problem is the File Manager. When I logged in via CDE and
>started File Manager, I received the following error msgs:
>
> File Manipulation Error: Cannot read from /opt/sysop/vlau [my home dir]
> File Manager Open Directory Error: Invalid folder specification, ~

I'd built a master Solaris 2.5 system disk and named it sol2.5ms.
Apparently, CDE tests for "." in the hostname and assumed that "sol2.5ms"
was a fully qualified hostname. According to Bug Report 1236640, dtfile
will not run if the system has a fully qualified hostname (bug report will
be attached to the end of this summary). By deleting the "." from my node
name (in /etc/hosts, /etc/nodename, /etc/hostname.le0, /etc/hostname.xxxn,
/etc/net/tic*/hosts), file manager has no problem starting up.

Problem 2:
---------
>I checked the log file in my home dir and noticed the following Xkeysym
errors
>on copy and paste:
>
> Name: Copy
> Class: XmpushButtonGadget
> 2054-xxx Illegal mnemonic character. Could not convert XKeysym to a
keycode

>Should I combine some CDE symbols to the default one by running xmodmap?

This problem disappeared after I changed the host name (see Problem 1).

Problem 3:
---------
>I want to start a Login Chooser on all my consoles running
>Solaris 2.5 and CDE v1.0.1 so that the users can select any host
>from the Chooser window.

>I added some lines in /usr/dt/config/dtlogin.rc (same as
>/etc/init.d/dtlogin and /etc/rc3.d/S99dtlogin) to start the
>login chooser in addition to dtlogin:
>
> /usr/dt/bin/dtlogin &
> OPENWINHOME=/usr/openwin; export OPENWINHOME
> /usr/openwin/bin/X -indirect `uname -n`
>
>When I rebooted the system, the system came up with the login chooser.
>I selected a login host but lost the keyboard interface (the mouse is
>OK). No matter what I typed in the User Name login box, nothing
>appeared and the blinking cursor never moved.
>
>Is it possible to start the login chooser from a startup script?
>By the way, I did this manually according to the instructions from
>the installation manual. I selected the command line login, logged
>in as the root user, and started X -indirect 'uname -n'. The login
>chooser came up. I selected a login host, entered my user login name
>and password, the console screen went white, displayed the Sun
>logo with the X, then displayed the login menu again. I even tried this
>using a newly created user account (with no dot files), with the same
>results.

I still have no resolution to this problem. May be CDE login chooser
is not meant to be displayed on a console which is running CDE. Would
welcome comments from anyone.

Here is the bug report on CDE File Manager:

<Head>
<Title>Bug Report for BugID cde/filemgr/1236640
</Title>
<Body>
<h1>Bug Report for BugID cde/filemgr/1236640
</h1><hr>
<pre>
 Bug Id: 1236640
 Category: cde
 Subcategory: filemgr
 State: evaluated
 Release summary: cde1.0.1, 1.0.1_fcs1
 Synopsis: dtfile won't work with fully qualified hostname:get Invalid folder

            specification
         
Integrated in releases:
 Patch id:
 <h3>Description:</h3>

  dtfile will not run if you system has a fully qualified hostname.
When you try to bring up dtfile from the front panel, you get
the following pop up error message:

  Invalid folder specification: &lt;$HOME&gt;

The customer is using the fully qualified hostname because she is
using DNS without NIS or NIS+.

To reproduce:
Modify your /etc/nsswitch.conf so that only "files" are being
searched.

- Reconfig you system so it has the fully qualified hostname
    like: kudo.corp.sun.com this can be done by sys-unconfig
    or manually by modifiying /etc/hosts /etc/net/tcl*/hosts
    and the hostname.le0 for a total of 5 files need to be modified

- Reboot

- type in the command "hostname" to verify you have a fully
    qualified hostname

- Start dtfile from the front panel

I did notice that dtcm seemed to be having problems as well.
I believe this dtfile problem may have something to do with
tooltalk since dtcm was have problems aswell. dtcm was giving
errors saying that rpc.cmsd was not running but it was running.
 <h3>Work around:</h3>
[oliver@Germany]

There seem to be 2 possible work arounds:

1. Remove the fully qualified hostname from /etc/nodename, /etc/hosts
   etc.
   Put the domain name in resolv.conf (the cleanliest solution according
   to our DNS experts).
   
2. Just put the abbreviated hostname as an alias in /etc/hosts,
   e.g. change
   
   33.63.127.255 pluto.somewhere.inspace.com loghost
      
   to
  
   33.63.127.255 pluto pluto.somewhere.inspace.com loghost

  (This way; hostname still returns the fully qualified hostname; that was
   what my customer wanted.)

-----
 [joel.hunter@Corp]
 
  The work around is to not use fully qualified hostname's
but this is not very resonable when your trying to use
DNS without NIS or NIS+. The customer modified her
DNS and was able to get it to work by doing the following

Below is info from customer:
----------------------------------------------------------

1. My test machine (CDE/dtfile worked unless I got DNS out of the picture)

solari IN HINFO SUN UNIX IN A \
128.174.33.172 ; UIUC-DCL-NET2 Address
                IN MX 0 solari
                IN TXT "Mona Heath 1412B "
                IN TXT "Work Station Support Group Test machine "
                IN TXT "ethernet address 8:0:20:21:44:a"

---------------------------------------------------------

2. User's machine where CDE/dtfile worked

th191-104 IN HINFO SUN SUNOS
                IN A 128.174.191.104 ; UIUC-TURNER-NET2 Address
                IN MX 0 th191-104
                IN TXT "Fermanian"

----------------------------------------------------------

3. User's machine where CDE/dtfile always got "invalid folder specification"

kbml IN HINFO SUN UNIX
                IN A 128.174.190.187 ; UIUC-TURNER-NET Address

The work around field as copied from bug report 1236622 follows:

  The work around is to not use fully qualified hostname's
but this is not very resonable when your trying to use
DNS without NIS or NIS+. I believe you can alias hostname's
under DNS so you can use the short name for the hostname.
 Summary:
File Manager may not run if host is configured with fully qualified hostname
w DNS w/o NIS or NIS

Sincerely,
Vicky Lau
vlau@msmail2.hac.com



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