CDE is slow with X terminals

From: CEA France <Herve>
Date: Tue, 08 Aug 95 12:01:49 +0200

Hello COSE adepts and gurus,

I set up CDE on an AlphaServer 2100 4/275 under Unix 3.2A.
We have some Tektronix X terminals (XP356 under TekXpress 8.0) connected
to it through an Ethernet 10BaseT LAN.
All tests were conducted at null CPU and network load and all equipment
wired to one single stand-alone hub.

It appears that launching and logging-in a session from an X terminal is
*VERY* slow, much slower than from the server's console (despite the Compaq
Q-vision board, coz you know THEY didn't make Number 9 GXE driver ...)

These are the average times I get :
Time to get CDE prompt when selecting an X client from XT chooser : 50s
Time to get the first active window after entering login password : 30s
With XDM instead of CDE, these times were in the order of 1s !

[Q]
1) Did some of you encountered this problem and have an explanation ?
   Perhaps the X terminal software is also involved ?
2) Will the "native" CDE (ie not ADK but fully integrated with the OS)
   correct the problem and with which relase of Digital Unix will it come ?
3) How to get rid of the blue and white CDE banner :
   "Starting COSE Desktop ..." which seems to be displayed with a time-out
   (should it be not enough 8-(
4) Another [Q] not performance related :
   I tweaked /etc/dt/appconfig/types/C/dt.dt in order to launch a login
   shell'ed dtterm. But I have also created actions which are executed
   inside a terminal window and, by this way, .login does not seem to be
   parsed (I lose my environment variables definitions).
   How does it come ? Are there several places where the DTTERM action is
   defined : one direct, one when used as a "box" (shell is purposely not
   used here ;-) for a command/program ?

A final note : once logged in, the response times are fairly normal (given
the comfort and hence necessary complexity of CDE).

Regards,
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| Herve DEMARTHE %^) E-Mail: demarthe_at_alpha.cad.cea.fr |
| CEA/DSM/DRFC/STEP Tel: +33 42257527 Fax: +33 42252661 |
| CEN Cadarache Bt 506 13108 St Paul Lez Durance FRANCE |
| <<< Apprentiz de todo, Maestro de nada ... >>> |
| All opinions expressed herein are mine and not those of CEA. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
Received on Tue Aug 08 1995 - 12:26:09 NZST

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