correct way to start X server in 1.7

mike mikereape@onetel.com
Wed Feb 17 17:57:00 GMT 2010


Hi,

I'm just a jerk user so be gentle with me.  I've looked at the user 
guide and searched the mailing list but I may have missed something.  I 
don't know what information is relevant so this is long.  Sorry.

I've been running some version of Cygwin 1.5 for many months now.  I 
would always just double-click on the "XWin Server" icon and then export 
the display variable and ssh into what is currently an F11 box.  
Typically I then only run thunderbird, emacs, firefox and oowriter.  
This all worked pretty well.

However I wanted to upgrade to 1.7.x.  I didn't want to get rid of my 
1.5.x installation until I knew the 1.7.x install was working correctly 
so I stupidly didn't rename my old desktop shortcuts for 1.5.x.  To 
upgrade to 1.7.x I did an "All" install to make sure I didn't miss 
anything even though I almost always just use ssh and only rarely emacs 
and otherwise nothing else.  At the end of the install I was asked if I 
wanted desktop shortcuts and items added to the start menu.  I said yes 
but it seems that because there was already a "Cygwin Bash Shell" in the 
"All Programs" menu and a "Cygwin" and "Cygwin Bash Shell" shortcut on 
the desktop both of which point to C:\cygwin\Cygwin.bat neither the "All 
Programs" menu nor the two desktop icons were updated.

Therefore I created a shortcut to C:\cygwin-1.7\Cygwin.bat.  But if I 
run that or select rxvt-x from All Programs > Cygwin I get the usual 
"cannot open display" message like the X server isn't running.  If I 
navigate to C:\cygwin-1.7\bin\startxwin.exe and then do either thing I 
can open X Windows apps on the remote F11 machine but I think this is 
the wrong way to do that because the X server apparently froze later 
after some use.

So, can someone tell me the proper way to get the X server running or 
(assuming I rename desktop shortcuts, etc.) how to re-run the script to 
set shortcuts, etc. up correctly?  BTW, I run Cygwin on a XP 
Professional Edition machine with auto-updates turned on.

Cheers,
Mike


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