[11823] in Athena Bugs
sun4 7.6R: xsession
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard J. Barbalace)
Wed Mar 9 20:45:41 1994
To: bugs@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 09 Mar 94 20:45:34 EST
From: Richard J. Barbalace <rjbarbal@MIT.EDU>
System name: w20-575-19
Type and version: SPARC/Classic 7.6R
Display type: cgthree
What were you trying to do?
Login on one of these obnoxious Suns.
What's wrong:
This was in the console, before the motd and all other login
information:
20:23 ************************************************************
20:23 Your session is still running.
20:23
20:23 end_session failed because:
20:23 The file /tmp/session_gate_pid.495 doesn't exist or is
20:23 not readable.
20:23
20:23 If you are running a .xsession file other than the system
20:23 default, and that file does not invoke the program
20:23 'session_gate', then end_session will not work. You should
20:23 end your session by terminating the last process you started
20:23 in your .xsession file.
20:23
20:23 If you did run session_gate, then the file was somehow
20:23 deleted. Try typing 'end_session -force' (this time only)
20:23 to end your session.
20:23 ************************************************************
20:27 Athena Workstation (SUN4m) Version 7.6R Tue Mar 8 08:53:37 EST 1994
The last line there is the start of my login. I found this
particularly confusing because the uid 495 of the previous user
was so similar to my uid of 475.
What should have happened:
Apparently this Sun thought the last user's logout failed because
it couldn't find the session gate file. No processes were left
running and nothing indicates that anything went wrong. The user's
session was not running and this stupid message should not have
been displayed. None of the commands advised in the message would
have worked because the user was in fact logged out. The previous
user obviously would not even have seen this message because it
appeared long after he had logged out and left. The message's only
purpose seems to bewilder the next user who gets it upon login.
This goes beyond bogosity.
Please describe any relevant documentation references:
http://iicm.tu-graz.ac.at/T0x00005b5b
