Re: suggestions...

[sopwith redhat com (Elliot Lee)]

On 24 Jul 1999 17:19:39 -0400, Scott Johnson <sj@aracnet.com> wrote:

>1)  Many times, I have managed to get something (I don't know what)
>sufficiently hosed such that Gnome fails to start properly when I log in.
>In other words, some saved state is somehow inconsistent, and the various
>parts of gnome_core hang and/or die, with nary a diagnostic printed on the
>screen.  (Log files do contain useful stuff.)

(My alias to startx runs 'startx -- -bpp 16 &> ~/.x.out' so I have the output
of the X server and the GNOME startup programs recorded.)

>a) provide a mechanism through control_center to blow away the session
>and "start over from scratch" with a known-good default session;
>
>b) when a session manager first starts, have a watchdog process that monitors
>the session manager, and if it doesn't finish up or report in a timely
>fashion, brings up a "the session might be hosed; continue or kill it"
>dialog; if the user selects the latter, the default session is used.

The GNOME setup included in RHL 6.0 had some magic keys that would let you
force use of the default session when GNOME was starting up. This solution
seems simpler and more practical than your idea of a watchdog. (Feel free to
write the watchdog thing though ;-)

(c) (this should be done in addition to any other solutions) Fix the problems
that cause a session to get hosed. Here's where you could definitely help -
get the latest versions of all the GNOME stuff, and gather as much detail as
possible on the problems, so that the various program authors can fix them.

>While we're at it, the ability to save/load multiple sessions would be 
>nice.

File a wishlist item in bugs.gnome.org :)

>2)  On a completely different topic:  I would LOVE to see a control panel
>applet that (where practical) allows me to control the X server--doing
>things like changing graphics modes and desktop size, restarting the
>server, etc.  I'm not talking about dangerous things like changing video
>timings, etc...I am talking about the equivalent of CTRL_ALT_+ on XFree86,
>with the advantage that screen resolution etc can now be managed as part
>of the session, rather than independent of it.  Perhaps this is something
>better handled by a WM, and if the WM supports this, gnome_session should
>use the WM for this support of thing.  Many window managers, however, 
>don't...

This is just a matter of someone writing an XFree86 capplet - the XF86VidMode
extension provides the needed communication channel to the X server. It
sounds reasonable to have it done by other than the window manager.

-- Elliot