Description of problem: Occasionally I need to run redhat-config-xfree86 over a relatively slow link to a remote site. I don't always know what monitor is attached or what calls are installed so the command-line options don't really help (since I don't know what to pass to --set-resolution etc.). While this does work, it takes a very long time to start up. It seems the bottleneck is sending a complete snapshot of the local display over the link for the desktop preview. This actually locks the local server while it's taking the snapshot, which means that the local machine is essentially unusuable for several minutes. The UI runs at acceptable speed once everything's going. Would it be possible to have an option that skips the screen preview and just uses some other pixmap? I tried to hack this out of screenSizePreview.py but my naive attempt failed miserably. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): All versions of redhat-config-xfree86 that I've tried (Red Hat 8.0 and 9). How reproducible: You must run it over a somewhat slow link, otherwise you don't notice. The average cable modem or ADSL connection should be sufficient. Steps to Reproduce: 1.ssh root.link 2.redhat-config-xfree86
The screen preview is *NOT* a snapshot of the screen. The screen preview already is a few very small pixmap images. It is the same code that Xconfigurator used to use called "Xtest", which has had the graphics updated to look like the modern desktop. Unless something was changed that I'm not aware of. Brent?
If that's true then you folks managed to choose images that always look exactly like whatever my desktop looks like. Seriously, though, redhat-config-xfree86 has (since I first tried it in the pre-8.0 betas) always used the local desktop for the preview. I just tried it on a work machine across a cable modem (2.5Mbps down, .5Mbps up) and it took six minutes for the initial window to appear, during which time my desktop was useless. The cursor would move but windows would not update their contents, the focus would not change, etc. I just don't think anyone envisioned a sysadmin running this application remotely, especially across a slow link. (Really, I pine for an interactive text-mode application to do this, but someone's already filed that enhancement request.)
/usr/X11R6/share/Xtest/pixmaps/desktop_icons.png /usr/X11R6/share/Xtest/pixmaps/panel_left.png /usr/X11R6/share/Xtest/pixmaps/panel_mid.png /usr/X11R6/share/Xtest/pixmaps/panel_right.png
I'm not sure that the application is designed nor intended to be ran remotely. Brent will have to comment on that.
redhat-config-xfree86 does take a snapshot of the current desktop in order to draw the preview screen. Alex originally wrote the program, so it's hard for me to say what exactly he had in mind. My guess is that he assumed that the tool would be run on the local machine. I'm not surprised that there might be some strange behavior by running it remotely. I agree that the behavior is a little strange, but I'm not sure it's bad enough to warrant fixing. Over a high speed network connection, it seems to run pretty fast. I think that using pretty much any X application of any complexity over a remote link is going to be pretty darn slow over a slow connection.