dtlogin hangs when remote /usr/local unavaillable

From: Charles Vachon <cvachon2_at_mrn.gouv.qc.ca>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 16:24:28 -0400

Hello Tru64 admins,

I have been fighting with this problem for a while, and I still don't
have a clue as to what happens. So maybe some of you are more familiar
with CDE than me, and have the answer.

Here is what happens:

We do share local and free software to a few TU 4.0D workstations here
using /usr/local. One server, named serv215, has all such software
installed in it's /usr/local hierarchy, and workstations mount
serv215:/usr/local over their /usr/local. So far, so good.

I noticed a problem when serv215 goes down, and workstations are still
NFS-mounting it's /usr/local. When a CDE session is ended at a
workstation (with the EXIT buffon), it's dtlogin screen does not cycle
back to a normal state. Instead, one gets a black screen with a
hourglass cursor, and nothing can be done to proceed any further. The
moment serv215 is restarted and it's NFS daemons are running,
workstations regain access to /usr/local and the dtlogin screen appears
again an it's normal operation is resumed. This behavior has been
observed both on the workstation's console and with Exceed X-server
connected to the workstation . What is strange is that /usr/local
contains nothing relevant to CDE. I even managed to remove references to
it altogether from the resources Dtlogin*userPath and Dtlogin*systemPath
in the /etc/dt/config/Xconfig file. So far I can not figure out why
/usr/local is important to dtlogin.

BTW, I would like to have your opinion on sharing software by remote
mounting /usr/local. Is this something of common practice, or does it
violate the normal use of /usr/local. Maybe a philosophical question,
but interesting indeed. If you have a better way of doing this and are
willing to share (no pun intended) your views, I welcome your comments.

TIA/will summarize
--
===============================================
Charles Vachon tel: (418) 627-6355 x2760
  email: cvachon2_at_mrn.gouv.qc.ca
  Administrateur de système
  FRCQ/Ministère des Ressources
  Naturelles du Québec
===============================================
Received on Thu Oct 07 1999 - 20:26:33 NZDT

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