Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Ken Evans <[email protected]> · Thu, 17 Sep 1998 11:07:08 -0500 (CDT)

     The problem with popup menus appearing behind the window from
which they are popped up in MEDM 2.3.4a when running on a remote Sun
client and displaying on a PC appears to be owing to a bad Motif
shared object library supplied with Sun's Common Desktop Environment
(CDE) implementation.  The library is /usr/dt/lib/libXm.so.3.  The
/usr/dt/lib/libXm.so.3 supplied with the TriTeal CDE, used at Argonne,
is OK.  Notice that this library is on the Sun client, not the PC X
server.

     The problem only appears with some PC X Servers, including theirs
(Sun Solstice Network Client 3.1 X Window Server) and Starnet's Micro
XWin32.  It does not appear with Exceed, even when using the Sun CDE.
It also appears on Redhat LINUX when running MEDM on a remote Sun CDE
and displaying on the LINUX X Server.  This information is from Pete
Jemian and from my own testing.  Bonnie Madre says it does not happen
with MEDM running on LINUX and displaying on LINUX.

     The problem appeared because the static version of MEDM 2.3.4a
supplied through the usual Argonne distribution was not really static
and was consequently using the libraries on the workstation on which
it was running.  The MEDM 2.3.3 version was truly static, used good
libraries, and worked all right.

     There is now a true static version, medm2.3.4a.static.gz, in the
usual place.  It works all right according to Pete.  The dynamic
version is still there as medm2_3_4a.dynamic.gz.  Both of these were
built on Solaris 5.5.1.  The static version of MEDM built on 5.5.1 is
known not to run on Solaris 5.6, but the dynamic version appears to
run all right.  The dynamic version may have the popup menu problem in
the special circumstances described above.  This has not been tested.
At this time Argonne is not supplying Solaris 5.6 versions, but it is
known that they do not run on Solaris 5.5.1.  (Read this carefully.
There may be a test. :-)

     You can check if a version is static or dynamic by typing:

	ldd `which medm`

where MEDM is running.  There should be only one dynamic library,
libdl.so, if it is static.  Otherwise, there will be many.  (Actually,
there shouldn't be any if it is static, but we have not been able to
get rid of libdl.)

     Note that this problem only occurs in a particular set of
circumstances, If you do not have the problem, you do not need to get
the new version.  The code has not been changed, only the build.

	-Ken

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System