[techtalk] gnome inter-panel rivalry

[Conor Daly]

On Mon, Nov 06, 2000 at 07:55:56PM -0800 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Marisa Mack thought:
> i thought maybe someone else would respond, (someone with a better idea
> of what's going on here) but they haven't, so i'll try...
> 
> > 1). When I start panel-h, I get told "there is a panel already
> > running..." (panel-v I guess).  Now, which panel has detected this and is
> > asking about it.  I presume panel-h knows nothing about the client host
> > except that it is showing on a remote display (It probably doesn't even
> > know this; it has no need to know) so that leaves panel-v or the gnome WM
> > itself.  Could be a situation like an ethernet card broadcasting its IP
> > address and another machine responding that it is already using that IP.
> > Why should panel-v/gnome know/care that there is a panel from another
> > host running also?
> 
> it seems to me like this is actually expected behavior, because the x
> server maintains current state info for all clients, and there is
> already a current window "panel" running. so neither panel-h/gnome nor
> panel-v/gnome knows that a current panel is running, as they are both
> "clients" on the client machine's x server, and it is the x server that
> is complaining of a current panel process.
> 
That seems like reasonable behaviour all right though it happens when
using my X-win32 server also.  I'm kinda thinking it's some kind of
gnome-libs stuff rather than XFree stuff.

> > 2). panel-h contains a couple of applets (clock and mailcheck since the
> > server is the mail server also).  When panel-h collides with panel-v,
> > these applets dissappear from panel-h and appear on panel-v so I end up
> > with 2 clocks in panel-v and none in panel-h and the mailcheck also
> > migrates to panel-v where it happily monitors the mail spool on the RH
> > client which never gets any mail since that all lives on the IMAP server!
> > If I then logout from the RH client and login at the server's console and
> > startx, panel-h has no lost its clock and mailcheck!  This behaviour seems 
> > bug-like to me. 
> 
> my guess here is that maybe when the second panel tries to start, it starts
> the applets separately, and this is why they open on the current panel,
> because there is no rule about multiple applets, as they are handled by the
> panel itself. keep in mind that i don't run gnome, so this is really just
> a guess :) let me know what you figure out, this is interesting...
> 
Now the spooky thing about that is that the two panels are running on
*different* hosts and will correctly start up any apps on their respective
hosts when launchers are clicked.  I would expect similar behaviour from
the embedded applets also. Seems a bit bug-like to me.

I'm going to post this to gnome-devel and see if they bite.  I'll let you
know what happens.


-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)