Re: startx crashes, xinit works

[luke dot kendall at cisra dot canon dot com dot au]

On 31 Mar, Harold L Hunt II wrote:
>  Luke,
>  
>  luke.kendall@cisra.canon.com.au wrote:
> > I find that after installing the latest version of Cygwin just now, X
> > crashes if I try to start it via startx (not starting with -rootless or
> > -multiwindow), with the error 
>  
>  There is only one way to prove that: send us the top of your 
>  /tmp/XWin.log from such a failed session.  The top of XWin.log has a 
>  print out of the command-line parameters that reached the server, which 
>  will prove for good whether -multiwindow is reaching the server or not.

You are quite right, I see:

    Welcome to the XWin X Server
    Vendor: The Cygwin/X Project
    Release: 4.3.0.65
    Contact: cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com

    XWin was started with the following command line:

    X :0 -multiwindow -clipboard

>  Oh yeah, -multiwindow reached the server all right... we wouldn't be 
>  starting multi-window mode if it didn't.
>  
> > Yet I can start it up if I run xinit.
>  
>   From 'startx':
>  
>  defaultserverargs="-multiwindow -clipboard"
>  
>  You see, it is startx that sets the default arugments, not xinitrc.

Yep, I see.  I thought that since startx.bat didn't pass such args to
startx I'd be okay, but thanks for pointing out the true behaviour.

>  You can always just do "startx -- :0", which provides server args of 
>  ":0", thus overriding the "defaultserverargs", thus preventing 
>  "-multiwindow" from being passed to XWin.exe.  Give that a try.  Note: 
>  The ":0" doesn't change anything if you were already running on display 
>  number 0 before (this is the default), it is just used here as a dummy 
>  argument so that defaultserverargs are ignored.  You could just as 
>  easily change this to "startx -- :1" if you were always starting on 
>  display number 1 instead.
>  
>  Harld

Thanks, Harold.  Yes, that worked fine.  I hadn't realised that startx
pulled in extra default arguments unless you explicitly added a "--".

For my own interest, where can I find where the default arguments are
coming from?  Is there something I should read up on, about this?

I notice that in the announcement of "New package: X-startup-scripts-1.0.0-1"
on March 10th, Harold pointed out:

    Note that the 'startx' and 'xinitrc' files have been modified to make 
    them start the server in the same manner as 'startxwin.bat'. 
    Additionally, "-clipboard" is now being passed to XWin.exe by default.

I haven't found the announcement yet where it mentions that
-multiwindow is added by default also.


Cheers,

luke