SUMMARY: Can't start CDE via dtlogin on Solaris 7 (final)

From: David L. Markowitz (David.Markowitz@litronic.com)
Date: Thu May 13 1999 - 20:30:18 CDT


Many thanks to:
        Anderson McCammont <and@ms.com>
        Arthur J. Byrnes <abyrnes@stetson.edu>
        Brooke King <jbking@sandia.gov>
        Gerhard den Hollander <gerhard@james.jason.nl>
        Jason K. Schechner <jas@cais.com>
        John Weekley <weekleyj@inlink.com>
        john.hilger@ac.com
        Jon Earle <jearle@dmcs.dnd.ca>
        mcleanc@sg-rs.co.uk
        Ray Delaney <rdelaney@bbt.com>
        Roger Fujii <rmf@unixbox.lookhere.com>
        rsaddler@cccis.com
        Salehi, Michael E <Mike.Salehi@usa.xerox.com>
        stephen.w.mclaughlin@bellatlantic.COM

All of whom tried to help, although none of them could. I appreciate
the effort anyway.

After a few OS rebuilds, and several repetitions of patch installations,
third-party software installations, etc., it boiled down to a simple
answer, with a nasty twist.

My original question:

> I just reinstalled Solaris 7 on a SS20. It was working before, but I
> wanted to remove some packages and re-layout my disks, and pkgrm failed
> indicating a corrupt installation database, so I decided to rebuild it.

> On rebuilding, I now can't login to CDE via dtlogin as either root
> or as a normal user. It puts up the dthello screen, then a few seconds
> later flashes a white screen, then black, then dtlogin.

> I *can* login to openwin. I can also login via command line.

The solution (after a long detour unfairly suspecting Star Office):

Patch 107226! We were installing -02, but it appears -01 would have
caused this too. This bug is actually a known bug at Sun (bug IDs
4226044 and 4212855), but not knowing what to look for I didn't find it
until after we had fingered this patch as the culprit.

The nasty twist? This patch only causes dtwm to die on SS20's with
SX frame buffers! That made it harder to isolate.

The real nasty part is that there is no patch for this, and no
work-around (short of not installing the patch of course). It is fixed
in CDE 1.4_18.

Thanks again Sun!

---

        David L. Markowitz Director, UNIX Software
        David.Markowitz@litronic.com Litronic Industries
        http://members.home.net/rttrek http://www.litronic.com/



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