[daip] more thoughts

[Eric Greisen]

I notice in the list of start-up messages that you sent, that the
procedure START_TVSERVERS issued messages but the TEKSRV, MSGSRV, et
al. issued no messages.  It would seem that those processes may not
have started properly at all.  XAS is particularly verbose.  Your
version of aips is a bit old I notcie that the DISPLAY is set to a
host name:0  rather than :0.  I will send in the next message a copy
of START_TVSERVERS that we now use with some tests to try,

Eric Greisen

------- start of forwarded message (RFC 934 encapsulation) -------

> CHEN YONGJUN writes:

>> I have tried the two methods you provided, but also failed. In fact,
>> I have intalled the software aips for many times, 

Best to tell him that this is not an AIPS install problem, from what we
can tell.

>> such a problem was met for the first time yet. I guess that the
>> computer itself causes the problem for the sake of mainboard with a
>> video card in it. In fact when the linux was installed, it showed
>> visual problem. Later I adjusted one CMOS parameter: 'Onboard Video
>> Buffer'. The original value is 1 MB. When I changed it to 8 MB, the
>> visual problem was then solved. However, this parameter only provides
>> two options: 1MB and 8 MB. Is it possible that it is the different
>> connection way between memory and video memory that leads to the
>> problem.

No.  All this has to do with is being able to support the various
visuals.  He didn't say what color depth (output of xdpyinfo, look for
something like:

   default visual id:  0x23
     visual:
       visual id:    0x23
       class:    TrueColor
       depth:    24 planes

But if he has forced pseudocolor via .Xdefaults, he doesn't need 24, but
can use 8 instead.

It sounds like he has one of those funky systems where the graphics
board shares the main memory, as opposed to having its own dedicated
memory bank.  They have been problematic with Linux (or more
specifically with XFree86 or X.org), but some actually work.

>> An alternative possibility I thought of is the fedora system which
>> causes this problem, but it is almost impossible. 

Haven't we, or someone else, run AIPS on Fedora Core 1 (or 2) already?
There's a Fedora box here (courtesy of Darrell Schiebel) that I/we could
try to run AIPS on.  He's actually got FC, SuSE and Mandrake on three
different systems for testing.

>> In addition none of the three window icons is shown both in panel and
>> in desktop while the terminal icons can be seen on the panel.

Maybe if he sends a screen shot, annotated, that would help.
Alternatively, if we could get a screen shot of one of our systems with
a gnome (or kde) panel and the "iconified" XAS and tekserver, and
annotate that (easy with the GIMP, I can do it if you want), it might
make it clear to him.

> The MSGSRV and TEKSRV should produce xterms which reallymust be
> visible as icons or windows if normal xterms are.  

Right.

> XAS makes a special window and so might have different troubles.  

I doubt that.  

> Read the aips help files for XAS and MSGSRV and TEKSRV - they refer to
> different types of windows which may be used (xterm is only the
> default for the latter 2).  XAS does things like shared memory and
> TrueColor by default.  The windows needed for that can be > 8 Mbyte.

This depends on screen resolution.  At 1024x768, you can get by with 4
MB and 32-bit color.  I don't remember if he said what X size he has.