Desktop Configurator LDAP

Question

Hi there.
We have Solaris10 x86 (patched to latest recommended), Sunray 4.0, authentication against LDAP and the Desktop Configurator installed.
On occasions we have noticed that the launchers and menu specified by the Desktop Configurator just don't appear. When this happens the Gnome element of the Configurator is still working because the gnome options are still working correctly (no terminal, blank background, permitted applications etc).
I have queried the apocd when this happens, using
/usr/lib/apoc/apocd is-enabled
/usr/lib/apoc/apocd status
and everything reports fine.
I have also tried to apocd restart, apocd reload, apocd enable all of which report fine but make no difference to the user either straight away or when they have logged out and back in.
There are some messages in /var/adm/messages ..
DesktopControl[19085]: [ID 283427 user.error] An error occurred creating the launchers: Connection failure
DesktopControl[19086]: [ID 188575 user.error] An error occurred starting the applications: Connection failure
DesktopControl[19085]: [ID 113572 user.error] An error occurred while running the desktop applications 'menu' plugin: Connection failure
But this seems odd as the gnome agent is still working and we have a replicated LDAP service so connectivity should never be a problem. The LDAP services aren't under any sort of load and the network is ok.
If anyone else has experienced this then please post to say so and better still if anyone (Clever Sun person or not) has the solution.....
Thanks,
Andy

Answer 1

In the situation you describe with two logins, the result will depend on whether the two sessions end up on the same server. If they do, then the second desktopApps will replace the first one (which will get killed) and so the first desktopApps process won't linger. If, however, the two sessions are on different servers in the failover group, then the first one's desktopApps PID will get lost, and the process will stay around.
Using the host name alone will probably not be sufficient, however (in that case the first session on the host which exits will kill the process and leave the other sessions on the same host without it) and it probably would be better to use the host name and display. I'd suggest replacing the contents of /usr/dt/config/Xsession.d/0099.LegacyConfig with the following:
PIDFILE=$HOME/.desktopApps.pid.`hostname`$DISPLAY
if [ -f $PIDFILE ]; then
        PID=`cat $PIDFILE`
        kill -9 $PID > /dev/null 2>&1
        rm $PIDFILE
fi
/opt/SUNWapleg/bin/desktopApps &
echo $! > $PIDFILE
/opt/SUNWapleg/bin/startupAppsand the much discussed line in /usr/dt/config/Xreset with:
cat $HOME/.desktopApps.pid.`hostname`$DISPLAY | xargs killThese modifications should create a per session PID file, which should help with consistency regarding the startup and destruction of desktopApps processes. Note, however, that this means there could be a few desktopApps processes running at the same time for the same user, all of them trying to add the launchers in the user home directories, so there could be some side effects there. As a matter of fact, there are other JDS applications which will have issues and/or strange behaviour when the user home is being accessed by multiple sessions.
Cyrille