gdm lock, race condition

[Andrew Clausen <clausen alphalink com au>]

Hi,

gdm should make the directory /var/run/gdm on make install.  Is this
just a matter of adding this to gdm/config/Makefile.am?
--------
lock_dir:
        mkdir /var/run/gdm
--------


I'm having problems getting gdm to work.  I suspect there's a race
condition in there somewhere - it works occasionly (especially when
under heavy load).  Anyone got any smart ideas for debugging?  The
problem with debugging is that children keep on getting spawned, and its
a real pain to get gdb to attach to the child process before it dies.  I
could just put in sleep's, but it seems like a hassle.  For some reason,
diagnostic messages that are supposed to go to the log file
(/var/log/messages) aren't getting there.  eg:

Oct  1 20:23:20 spam gdm[1153]: gdm_display_run: Server forked slave:
1154...
Oct  1 20:23:20 spam gdm[1154]: gdm_slave_init: Xserver on pid 1155
Oct  1 20:23:21 spam gdm[1154]: gdm_slave_child_handler: 1155 returned 1

gdm's error messages seem very verbose (in the source), but there's no
hint of what the problem is, here.
In the source, I can't find a single time when exit(1) is called with no
error message written.

Andrew clausen