Subject: FVWM: can't run some programs from fvwm2 menus or FvwmButtons

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 06 Jun 1998 11:53:20 -0400

Hi,

    I'm running fvwm 2.0.46 on an SGI Indy (IRIX5.3). I can't run some
programs from either the fvwm menus or FvwmButtons. 

>From my ~/.fvwm2rc:

*FvwmButtons(Title "-", Icon xfm_draw.xpm,\
    Action `Exec /usr1/misc/bin/ivtools/idraw &`)

*FvwmButtons(Title "-", Icon info.xpm,\
    Action `Exec /usr1/misc/bin/tk/tkinfo &`)

*FvwmButtons(Title "-", Icon xpaint.xpm,\
    Action `Exec /usr1/misc/bin/xpaint &`)

*FvwmButtons(Title "-", Icon xv2.xpm,\
    Action `Exec /usr/local/bin/xv &`)

Xpaint and XV work fine - idraw and tkinfo don't even start up (if I use
the hangon extension to Action the button stays depressed). They all work
from the command line. I've tried different permissions and program
locations - nothing helps.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Thank you!

        Alan

-- 
Carnegie Mellon University                             Alan D. Guisewite
Robotics Institute                            Senior Research Technician
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~adg                                   [email-masked]
                  To ice! To snow! To Sodeskaya we go!

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---

From: Pete Forman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 08:21:13 +0100

> programs from either the fvwm menus or FvwmButtons.

For symptoms check your error log, which may be called xdm-errors.  If 
you can't find it, alter your startup file (.xsession or whatever) to
send the messages to a known place.

    fvwm2 > ~/fvwm2.log 2>&1

Alternatively at the start of .xsession.

    exec > ~/xsession.log 2>&1

A common cause of programs running from the command line but not under
a window manager is lack of environment variables.  I find it useful
to be able to dump fvwm's environment with a entry in the Quit-Verify
menu in .fvwm2rc.

+              "Dump environment" Exec set > $HOME/fvwm.env

This can be compared against "set" run from the command line.
-- 
Pete Forman
Western Geophysical
[email-masked]
--
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---

From: "A. van Werven" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 15:38:17 +0200 (DST)

> programs from either the fvwm menus or FvwmButtons. 

[snip]

> They all work from the command line. I've tried different permissions and program

I have had the same problem on an SGI.
The only things I can think of are VERY ugly solutions, but at least they work...

First, try not doing an exec command directly but start a function instead,
in which you start the program with an exec.

If that doesn't help, make a script file in your home directory (I told you it
was going to be ugly !) that starts the program and call this from within Fvwm.

VERY strange problem, though.
On my machine, it just disappeared after a while.
Does anybody know what's happening here ???

Hope this helps,

-- 

A. van Werven
Dept. of Computer Science, Leiden University, The Netherlands
E-mail: [email-masked]
URL: http://www.wi.leidenuniv.nl/~avwerven

Life would be easier if I had the source code.