Paul Mather wrote:

> I have a DECstation 3100 and a DEC 3000/300LX, both running stock NetBSD
> 1.4.  The 3000/300 is headless, but is the beef of the two systems, so I
> want to use my 3100 mainly as an X terminal to the 3000/300 (but also be
> able to open up X sessions on the 3100 occasionally).  (*Ideally* what
> I'd like to be able to do is to have a chooser pop up on the 3100 of all
> the machines on my subnet that will allow me to open an X session on,
> and choose from the list, but that is just icing on the cake.  What I
> most need is to get the 3100 acting as an X terminal for the 3000/300.)

I think your fundamental problem is that if you start X from within xdm,
xdm expects to be controlling it.  I haven't tried that myself, but I
would expect that it would get "upset" at some point...

Also, xdm will give you a chooser if you send it an indirect or
broadcast query.  If you send it a direct query (with "-query") you are
asking it for a login prompt, not a chooser.

Review the Xaccess file (referred to by xdm-config) on the Alpha to make
sure that it allows logins from the pmax.  That would be a single-word
line of the form:
	pmax-hostname
or
	*.your-domain
The manpages and the comments in the default Xaccess file should help.

Sounds like you _also_ want something like the following:

	pmax-hostname	CHOOSER	BROADCAST
or
	*.your-domain	CHOOSER	BROADCAST

This will get xdm on the Alpha to run a chooser for the pmax.
Then fire up xdm on the Alpha with an empty Xservers file.

On your pmax, I would run xdm with a similar (if not identical)
configuration to your Alpha.  Don't get it to run X directly, but let it
allow logins from the pmax.  It's up to you as to whether you want to
allow CHOOSER service on it as well (for convenience, I guess).

Then start up an X server with your favourite command-line options,
including something like "-indirect alpha".  You can run this from a
shell script.  I tend to run it out of /etc/ttys as though it was
another getty (although I haven't done this on a pmax, it should work?).

The Xserver will then fire up and send an indirect query to the Alpha,
which will then fire up a chooser window, allowing you to select your
login host de jour (including the pmax).

Of course, it becomes painful when the Alpha is offline, so you might
want to experiment with starting X with "-broadcast" instead.  I use
-indirect all the time as I point it to a central host that has all the
correct Xaccess configs and is reliable enough that it suits.  You could
start the pmax X server with "-indirect pmax"...

Of course YMMV, but this should get you going.
__
David Burren
davidb@osa.com.au