Article Title	 	: login problems
Creation Date		: 01/15/97
Message ID		: CGTNPQ
Last Update		: 01/15/97
Expiration Rules	: unknown
Location		: NCD-Articles/Host_Systems/SGI/
=================================================================

  Problem Overview:
  ================

  Windows environment doesn't come up correctly when logging to the SGI
  host. Sometimes, it would come up with one Xterm window on top of the
  screen (6"x4"), the window has a gray border with no title. The Tool-
  chest menu doesn't appear, it happens very inconsistently.

  The most relevant clue was found in the /var/adm/SYSLOG file.

  There was a line with the usual date,time,hostname followed by
  Xsession:login

  The following line again had the date,time,hostname followed by
  Xsession: Session "(null)" execution failed  (err 14)

  Solution:
  ========

  A patch from SGI contains a fix to fix the problem, patch #1211. 
 
  The following information that is obtained from:

                http://www.sgi.com/Support/patch_intro.html

   Patch #1211 Release Note:


   1. This patch is applied to IRIX 5.3 (all versions).  
      It incorporates changes to XDM from patch 518, which it supersedes.

   2. Bugs Fixed by Patch SG0001211:

   o Bug 273287 password expiration (e.g. passwd -f username
     or password aging) was not honored by xdm.

   o There is a bug in xdm that causes X terminals to fail to start a
     session correctly.  The problem usually occurs when other X terminal
     sessions are already logged in.  (Bug #273251)

   o X authority does not work if there is a dot in the hostname because
     uname is used to get the hostname instead of gethostname. 
     (Bug #266334)

     This bug report also indicated that FTPD had a similar problem which
     is addressed by patch SGI #1215.