CygWin : "XWin -indirect localhost -... ."

["Pierre Guebels" <pierreg at phaselink dot com>]

As a common situation our Company LAN comprises a multiplicity of linux and 
solaris servers. Servers are all offering rlogin sessions via XDMCP chooser 
to anyone on the LAN. A user on the LAN runs on his local PC (Windows XP OS) 
CygWin to access such servers. CygWin startxdmcp.bat in /usr/X11R6/bin/ is 
used as launch method. The following works perfectly : "XWin -indirect 
MyLANserverx -nodecoration -lesspointer -swcursor -clipboard". It displays 
correctly a chooser running on MyLANserverx for both linux and solaris 
choosers. Similarly, "XWin -query MyLANserverx", and, "XWin - broadcast" 
work correctly.

Now one likes to remove from such login procedure the dependency on 
MyLANserverx availability for running the chooser. Indeed MyLANserverx could 
be down or under maintenance or ... . Therefore one would prefer to use 
CygWin itself on the user PC for polling XDMCP offers on the LAN and 
presenting the chooser. This would provide a more reliable login procedure. 
For the purpose I was launching : "XWin -indirect localhost - ..."  to 
enforce CygWin localhost to be the server of indirect XDMCP queries from the 
LAN. In any manner I cannot get the procedure to work!? The CygWin X server 
starts delivering the same dark full screen as in the case when 
"XWin -indirect MyLANserverx" was used but no chooser pops-up, everything 
keeps silent at that point. I am quite sure that in /etc/X11/xdm/ the 
xdm-config and Xaccess files are properly set. I did it carefully as per 
CygWin documentation in man xdm.

Note further that :
1. - I can start separately the chooser (/etc/X11/xdm/chooser & , after 
launching "Xwin -indirect localhost ...") but it keeps absolutely silent and 
keep presenting an empty hosts list even when one pushes on its "list" 
button.
2. - when trying to get localhost (PC user + CygWin) as participant in the 
chooser list delivered by MyLANserverx (linux or solaris) the configuration 
(same xdm-config and Xaccess) did also fail. I was not able to get Cygwin on 
the user PC to present itself as potential login host for someone on the LAN 
via MyLANserverx chooser.

Point 2. and "XWin -indirect localhost" failures described above seem for me 
quite related. It looks as if XDMCP broadcast protocol can not work / is not 
running / is not set-up on the PC with XP and CygWin. But to check this I do 
not know where to look. So I am stuck with "Xwin -indirect localhost - ... 
". I read all possible documentation on CygWinX web site, on  XDMCP How To 
web location and from multiple Google search results and I can not get a 
clue about how one can configure CygWin for running on its localhost PC its 
chooser (chooser.exe in /etc/X11/xdm/ ). I would be very grateful if someone 
can help me herewith. Thanks. 



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