On Tuesday, March 03, 1998 7:33 PM, Michael L. Hitch
[SMTP:mhitch@lightning.oscs.montana.edu] wrote: > On Mar 3, 7:23pm,
Rob Mohr wrote: >> > (P.S.  On my DECstation 3100 I still have to kill
the first Xserver >process >> > that is started when I execute xinit.
The initial process hangs with >an >> > reverse video screen.  After
killing that process and re-running xinit >> > everything works fine.
Anyone know if this will be fixed in 1.3.1?)  >> >> Try adding a
"sleep 5" between the xfs startup and the xdm startup.  >> I suspect a
problem when the X server tries to open the connection to >> the font
server before the font server is ready.


Someone else (apologies, I forget whom) had a theory that there was a
race condition between access to /dev/console (via /etc/rc or a getty)
and xfs accessing /dev/console as its controlling tty. 

Doing "unset -m" (or "set -m"?)  in /etc/rc turned off (or turned on?)
job control.  This supposedly fixed the race and fixed the symptoms
with xfs on a pmax hanging on its first connection from an Xserver.

That's worth a PR.

I'd say a better fix is to get xfs to daemonize itself better.