Orbit and Metacity

[Stephane Chauveau <s chauveau chello nl>]

Hello,

I have a strange problem with Orbit (2.4.3) and Metacity (2.4.2) in 
Gnome 2.1

I am trying to enable network sockets in Corba (to be able to run gnome 
applications on multiple servers).
I found in the Orbit FAQ that I have to create a ~/.orbitrc file with 
ORBIIOPIPv4=1
That works fine except for one application: metacity

Somehow, with this setting, metacity cannot resolve anymore symbolic 
hostname in my DISPLAY
(which I need because I have an exported display).

I found a way to reproduce the behavior without a remote display by 
using Xnest.
My hostname is 'simak'

(1) create a new X display using Xnest and open an xterm to test it.

 # Xnest :2 &
 # HOST=simak
 # xterm -display $HOST:2

(2) create ~/.orbitrc

 # echo ORBIIOPIPv4=1 > ~/.orbitrc

(3) start metacity. It fails!!!!!!!!

 # metacity --display=$HOST:2
 _X11TransSocketINETConnect: not INET hostsimak
  Window manager error: Unable to open X display simak:2

(4) remove ~/.orbitrc

 # rm ~/.orbitrc

(5) restart metacity. This time it should work

 # metacity --display=$HOST:2


Metacity works fine when the DISPLAY contains an IP address instead of a 
symbolic name.

One of the interesting things I noticed in metacity is that gconf (and 
so orbit) is configured before
the call of gtk_init_check() that produces the error messages.

Could it be that the orbit configuration in gconf breaks the X11 
hostname resolution?

Stephane Chauveau