[pkg-x2go-devel] Bug#766299: nxproxy: BIG-REQUESTS patch builds but fails at runtime

[paul.szabo at sydney.edu.au]

Dear Mike,

> If it is not possible to dynamically detect if 16 or 32 bit encoding 
> is used on the server-side (the client-side should be the flexible 
> part), then your patch has to wait for that rewrite to come (a design
> change then is absolutely ok and wanted). I don't think we should 
> break compatibility within the 3.5.0.x release series.
>
> So again, do you see an option for detecting the server-side encoding 
> (or querying it or triggering/enforcing it via a nxagent cmdline 
> option)?

That would be do-able, but probably not practical. The two nxproxy-ies
could somehow try to detect whether the other is also capable of
BIG-REQUESTS, and if so use 32-bit encodings and not use the
HIDE_BIG_REQUESTS_EXTENSION setting; but if not then fall back to 16-bit
and to hide. That would make the code even more messy (and likely,
buggy) than it is now.

> PS: How do you test if the BIG-REQUESTS implementation works? With 
> TexPower, you said. What do I have to do to trigger the BIG-REQUESTS
> bug if nx is not patched?

It is texworks from
  http://tug.org/texworks
  http://code.google.com/p/texworks/wiki/Building
All you need to trigger the bug is to run texworks. Having scrutinized
things, it does QueryExtension on BIG-REQUESTS; if not getting it
(because of nxproxy hide as now), then sends "broken" (ill-formatted)
X11 stream that crashes the "nxproxy -C" side. With my patches, it uses
BIG-REQUESTS just fine.

---

One of my users told me that my patched nxproxy would crash when using
kile (on his special TeX file), seems it is the "nxproxy -S" side that
crashes. I am now working on reproducing this, and intend to fix.

I have asked my users to test nxproxy, and will attempt to fix all
issues as they become apparent. When nxproxy seems "stable", I intend to
make it the default: start "nxproxy -S" with Xorg on the thin client,
and start "nxproxy -C" and do the xauth and DISPLAY "switcheroo" within
the GDM2 Xsession.

I will report back here as I go.

Cheers, Paul

Paul Szabo   psz at maths.usyd.edu.au   http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/psz/
School of Mathematics and Statistics   University of Sydney    Australia