In order to set up the X11 environment, you must understand how the X session is controlled. Figure 2 illustrates the possible behaviours you can get from the customisation of the xsession.
Figure 2: Model of the HEP_Xsession
The X11 environment provides a reasonable working default
to the user through the so-called HEPiX Desktop
(to be compared with the COSE/CDE, HP-VUE etc. desktops).
Although the session management is still poor, this setting is a
way to solve resources problems caused by the too heavy COSE/CDE,
HP-VUE, etc. desktops. It will evolve with the technology and might enable
in the future a real X11R6 session manager (OK, this is one reason why it is
"beta" as well!!).
Through the so-called Major Switches it is easy to customise the session at
the user level or for a machine, a site, a group of users, etc.
in the same way as it is possible with the HEPiX shell scripts.
There is a way to control what is and is not allowed.
The major switch is the key idea for the customisation of the X11
environment. After a 4 months collaboration between CERN and DESY we
finally managed to understand how a theoretical X session should be
decomposed, and then we found a flexible way to handle this environment.
You can then control the session with the following Major Switches:
HX_WM # the window manager: fvwm, mwm, etc. HX_DESKTOP # the desktop: CDE, HP-VUE, DXSESSION,HEPIX HX_STARTUP # the startup script: .xsession, # HEP_xsession.default HX_LAST_CLIENT # the control or last client of the session # adam, xterm, window-manager, etc. HX_ROOT_WINDOW # the command which sends a root window # on your screen HX_KEYBOARD # the name of an xmodmap file HX_SOURCEPROFILE # do you want to source your # user profile files or not # (might be dangerous because of stty's)
Once the HEPiX scripts are installed have a look at the file
/usr/local/lib/hepix/templates/xprofileTable 3 tells you that if you customise a file
/etc/hepix/xprofile
you
can specify what is the default window manager for this system. You can
even specify that for this or that value of HX_VENDOR
you want this
or that window manager./etc/hepix/xclients
. /etc/hepix/xclients.m
which will be executed even if the user or the group levels don't want it
(so be careful when you set such a file)!/usr/local/lib/hepix/tools/Xinfo
to determine some characteristics of Xservers connecting to your system
and the uco -X11 command provides a menu which offers you the possibility
to fake the session. It produces a log file in $HOME/.hepix/xsession.log
and you can use this output to understand what would happen for users' sessions
when they connect to your system.uid
less than 100,
and users listed in /etc/hepix/list-
don't get the HEPiX X11 scripts
but get what was provided by the vendor of your system.
Although you may not have the vendor default login panel, if you
login as root.HX_WM=local
, because they are
going to use Windows as a window manager which optimises the
resources and integrates very well with Microsoft Windows. Of
course if you prefer fvwm, then you can specify it. /etc/hepix/font-servers
for example:xtsoft1 xtsoft2The HEPiX-X11 customisation of xdm doesn't set MAGIC-COOKIE although the installation procedures gives some hints on how to do this. There are many reasons for not doing it with the HEPiX scripts and the best one is that, it is probably not the HEPiX scripts' role to setup the security (This is a very "system" level thing to do and requires some checks on some directories, etc. ).
It is possible that in the future the installation procedure installs this feature. At CERN, an xauth feature of the SUE project will do it and will be effective by the end of 1995.