Re: XDM loop: Fix report.

[The Thought Assassin <assassin@sleepless.south.networx.net.au>]

On Wed, 18 Feb 1998, Cyberdyn explained:
> The XDM loop-o-death.

> Normal process:
>         XDM is started, normally at bootup, and takes control of the display and
>         keyboard.  
>         XDM starts up the X server for graphics.
Not necessarily - a possible breakpoint if we so desire. man xdm.

<deletia>

>         When the user exits the environment XDM runs some clean up scripts and
>         takes control again.
Hmmm, scripts... so at this point we can:
* ask the user whether to restart X
or
* check how long the previous session lasted
or better (IMHO)
* find out whether X was killed forcibly, and act accordingly - do we
  restart or not? depends whether the person "logged off" or "shutdown".

So XDM can take care of this for us, and we have much better control of
how, and whether XDM exits - we can make XDM exit to whatever kind of
error/info screen we want.
This seems to be to be both the "right way" and the most powerful way.
(the two often coincide) I hate to use a workaround when we could take
away the cause of the problem by giving XDM the brains not to restart.
As I said earlier, merely writing down a description of the so-called loop
shows us that it is not inherent in XDM, and just an artifact of the way
XDM is configured.

> I was able to prevent getting stuck in this endless loop by creating a script
> that runs XDM called safe-xdm.  It's a very small script that simply:
<Innovative but slightly ugly solution deleted>

I really think that the architecture is in place to remove this problem at
the source rather than having to fix the symptoms by starting a process
just to kill it:)
What do the rest of us think?

-Greg Bastow("I push the limits to the sickening heights,
             I can feel my heartbeat's pressure on the back of my eyes"
             -MoLG: Limiter