[859] in Athena Bugs
re: Feedback on the standard .uwmrc
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jerome H. Saltzer)
Thu Sep 8 17:27:24 1988
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 88 17:02:22 EDT
To: <ademola@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Cc: geer@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, cfyi@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU,
In-Reply-To: <ademola@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>'s message of Thu, 08 Sep 88 13:33:47 EDT
From: Jerome H. Saltzer <Saltzer@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
> Please have someone look into whether the site-wide default .uwmrc is
> indeed an X11R2 implementation. See attached for background information.
> Please keep me posted on your findings.
Ademola,
A little more investigation got to what seems to be the bottom of the
problem. This one is bizarre.
1. Between 5.5T and 6.0C, uwm was changed so that its default
behavior matches the behavior that we used to get by handing it a
.uwmrc file. (From a compatibility point of view, a notice of that
change should appear in the release notes locker.)
2. Because you no longer have to supply a .uwmrc to get the standard
Athena behavior, the new prototype files don't include one, thus new
users are being created without one. Old users don't need to delete
their .uwmrc because, if standard, it sets things up the same as the
new default. IF the user has a non-standard .uwmrc, things the user
specifies in .uwmrc will be set up as specified; things the user
doesn't specify there may change because the uwm defaults changed.
This implication should also appear in the release notes locker.
3. BOTH the old standard .uwmrc and the new defaults in uwm set up a
preference menu (meta-shift-leftbutton) that issues faulty commands.
It turns out that the commands being issued are X10 (!) xset
commands.
4. Since the preference menu bug was apparently not reported in a
whole year of operation of 5.5T, it would appear that almost noone
ever uses the preference menu, so fixing the preference menu is
probably not of the highest priority. (Can anyone provide evidence
that contradicts this claim?)
Jerry
