An odd Xserver problem was uncovered on the pii's. It appears that there is a random limit on the number connections accepted by the Xserver, that is, the maximum number windows that can be open at the same time. Sometimes it's as low as 4, sometimes it's 6 or 7, sometimes it's "unlimited". The correct number is "unlimited"- there should be no limit on the number of windows one can open (apart of screen real estate and memory use issues). There could be a hardwaired limit, but from the XFree86 documentation it is not clear what it is. Presumably it is a large number like "100", and what we see is a bug in the Xserver we are running. Since the problem appears to be random (sometimes the limit is not there), one possible solution is to restart the Xserver (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) and login again in hope that the random limit does not manifest itself. To really fix this might be easy or hard. I did not see any mention of this bug on the Xfree86 web pages. However, we are not running the latest version of the Xserver, so an upgrade to a newer version may (or may not) fix the problem. So, if you get the unlucky number, say your prayers to the Gods (or daemons) of Graphical user interfaces and use Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. -- Konstantin Olchanski Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, New York olchansk@bnl.gov
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