X errors



  • I think this image speaks for itself:



  • It does speak for itself.  My bet is that the error is unrelated to the coding of the application.  The partition could be full, or someone could have changed the perms on the /tmp dir. 

    Still makes you go WTF though. 

    Didn't know Cygwin had an X implementation.  omgnub. 



  • Considering this is Cygwin, I assume that the OP is using Windows and using Cygwin to run specially recompiled Linux programs. The screenshot looks like maybe Vista (another WTF) with Aero turned off.

    And since this is Windows, it's no wonder it couldn't find /tmp unless Cygwin's supposed to be mapping it to C:\temp or something similar.

    (and Yes, Cygwin does -- and must -- include an X server compiled for Windows. No personal experience with it myself -- I use MinGW and Xming instead.)



  • Is that Vista? Looks like it, could explain things :)



  • @joemck said:

    And since this is Windows, it's no wonder it couldn't find /tmp unless Cygwin's supposed to be mapping it to C:\temp or something similar.

    A standard out-of-the-box Cygwin install maps / to c:\cygwin\, which then contains the standard folders bin, usr, tmp, etc, ...
    Other drives like D:\ can be accessed from within Cygwin by going to /cygdrive/d/

    It looks like X throws a "standard fatal error" when it cannot access its log file, and that "standard fatal error" refers to the log file.
    Simply a case of using a too general error description.



  • I am a Cygwin user.

    If this screenshot speaks for itself, then it mumbles badly, because I am not sure I understand what it is saying.

    Is it simply that it is referring to the path to the log file by its UNIXoid form?



  • @joemck said:

    And since this is Windows, it's no wonder it couldn't find /tmp unless Cygwin's supposed to be mapping it to C:\temp or something similar.

    Cygwin maps all paths into a defined directory like C:\cygdrive\

    Otherwise it would fail on even the most trivial programs.

    The program probably failed because of incorrect permissions. Why it failed isn't really the point; the point is that the application naively makes the assumption that all errors will be logged into /tmp/log, even though the very ability to log errors into /tmp/log is itself a possible error condition.

     Not much of a WTF, just an amusing screenshot



  • @belgariontheking said:

    Didn't know Cygwin had an X implementation.  omgnub. 

     It does, and it's quite handy to access you're servers KDE GUI to configure it through putty..... (Yes, I actually have an college made who's proud that he could do that because he didn't like taking the keyboard and mouse to the server every time.)

    O, and did I mention this is done through a SSH v1 connection with user "root" and password "password"?

    And that he uses the server to host the webpage's he makes for people?

    And this I mention that by "making" I mean: "Opening word, saving the page as HTML an add a table somewhere if het can't get the layout he wan't"? (Altough he was very proud that he got [url=http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html]XAMPP[/url] working on the server and that he could install Joomla. He then moved on with figuring out how to delete that irritating sample data and how to install a free template he downloaded)
     



  • @joemck said:

    (and Yes, Cygwin does -- and must -- include an X server compiled for Windows. No personal experience with it myself -- I use MinGW and Xming instead.)

     

    Not sure why Cygwin would have to include an X server. I certainly got a lot of use out of it before the X server was even available, and I think I've actually started it up maybe twice since then.



  • @Critter said:

    If this screenshot speaks for itself, then it mumbles badly, because I am not sure I understand what it is saying.

    Is it simply that it is referring to the path to the log file by its UNIXoid form?

    The error message is "A fatal error occurred. See log file for details", but the fatal error is that the log file couldn't be written to.



  • @Carnildo said:

    The error message is "A fatal error occurred. See log file for details", but the fatal error is that the log file couldn't be written to.

    Yeah, poor error message, but it is a 95% chance it's a permission issue.  Depending on how you install Cygwin, it will try to emulate unix file permissions in NTFS, which can cause a lot of strange issues.  Especially on Vista, when these directories were created as an elevated account during the installation.

    <sidenote>I'd hang myself if I didn't have my xterm on Windows.  That windows cmd prompt is an abomination. </sidenote>



  • @joemck said:

    Considering this is Cygwin, I assume that the OP is using Windows and using Cygwin to run specially recompiled Linux programs.

    "specially recompiled Linux programs"?



  • @magetoo said:

    @joemck said:
    Considering this is Cygwin, I assume that the OP is using Windows and using Cygwin to run specially recompiled Linux programs.

    "specially recompiled Linux programs"?

    All cygwin "Linux" programs access a dll appropriately named cygwin.dll, meaning that their source code was altered significantly so that normal Linux-like behavior can be emulated in windows. Having to alter the source in such a way obviously makes for the case that their code can now be considered special, as it relies on a set of interesting hacks. I dislike how cygwin must connect to the internet to install itself, can't they just offer a minimal install?


  • @Lingerance said:

    @magetoo said:

    "specially recompiled Linux programs"?

    All cygwin "Linux" programs access a dll appropriately named cygwin.dll, meaning that their source code was altered significantly so that normal Linux-like behavior can be emulated in windows. Having to alter the source in such a way obviously makes for the case that their code can now be considered special, as it relies on a set of interesting hacks. I dislike how cygwin must connect to the internet to install itself, can't they just offer a minimal install?

    I meant to focus on "Linux", not "special". Are you saying that Cygwin is going explicitly for Linux compatibility, and uses command line tools specifically from some Linux distro? That just sounds completely backwards... but I guess I wouldn't be too surprised.

    As far as I had imagined, it's "just" a POSIX layer on which most Unix software can run unmodified; plus gcc and some standard GNU tools. (X would not be one of these "most" that'd just run, I suppose.) But feel free to fill me in, I never used it.



  • @Lingerance said:

    All cygwin "Linux" programs access a dll appropriately named cygwin.dll, meaning that their source code was altered significantly so that normal Linux-like behavior can be emulated in windows. Having to alter the source in such a way obviously makes for the case that their code can now be considered special, as it relies on a set of interesting hacks.
    Actually, Cygwin is able to run a lot of *nix stuff without having to alter the source code in any way - just ./configure && make && make install and you're ready to go.@magetoo said:
    Are you saying that Cygwin is going explicitly for Linux compatibility, and uses command line tools specifically from some Linux distro?
    While Cygwin is a POSIX layer that runs on top of Win32, it is primarily targeting Linux compatibility (and not just because all user-space tools are from GNU).



  • @magetoo said:

    @Lingerance said:
    @magetoo said:

    "specially recompiled Linux programs"?

    All cygwin "Linux" programs access a dll appropriately named cygwin.dll, meaning that their source code was altered significantly so that normal Linux-like behavior can be emulated in windows. Having to alter the source in such a way obviously makes for the case that their code can now be considered special, as it relies on a set of interesting hacks. I dislike how cygwin must connect to the internet to install itself, can't they just offer a minimal install?

    I meant to focus on "Linux", not "special". Are you saying that Cygwin is going explicitly for Linux compatibility, and uses command line tools specifically from some Linux distro? That just sounds completely backwards... but I guess I wouldn't be too surprised.

    It's really GNU compatibility. Almost no userspace programs interface with Linux directly, and the few which do will not work under cygwin. I know that saying "linux" gets more media attention, but pretty much everybody is coding to GNU, not linux. 



  • @asuffield said:

    I know that saying "linux" gets more media attention, but pretty much everybody is coding to GNU, not linux. 

    Much to the annoyance of RMS and the confusion of damn near everybody, geek or otherwise.

    I confess that I, too, call the system as a whole Linux, despite being aware of the distinction.
     



  • @ChZEROHag said:

    @asuffield said:

    I know that saying "linux" gets more media attention, but pretty much everybody is coding to GNU, not linux. 

    Much to the annoyance of RMS and the confusion of damn near everybody, geek or otherwise.

    I confess that I, too, call the system as a whole Linux, despite being aware of the distinction.
     

    If rms had just adopted Linux as the GNU kernel then there wouldn't be this problem. Instead he decided to carry on with Hurd. How many years has it been in development now? I'd say it's probably one of the least successful major Free Software projects around, and certainly compared to the rest of GNU.



  • @m0ffx said:

    Instead he decided to carry on with Hurd. How many years has it been in development now?

    18 years, and they still haven't settled on a microkernel to use as the basis of the whole thing.


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