Modified version of Oroborus

[Dmitry DELTA Malykhanov]

Some wm's (oroborus for instance) are simply ignoring -display parameter.
So it should be either 'DISPLAY=:1 ./oroborus' or, as you said, 'xterm
-display :1' and then ./oroborus from that xterm (xterm is smart enough to
keep DISPLAY environment in sync the -display parameter).

Also some stuff may not work properly (especially if you have another
instance running already) since it tries to write some files under $HOME.
I'm using the following technique, to create a "sandbox" for such tools:

mkdir ~/tmp/fakehome
ln -s ~/.Xauthority ~/tmp/fakehome
# you may need to link other config files/dirs here
HOME=~/tmp/fakehome ; export HOME
Xnest :1 &
DISPLAY=:1 ; export DISPLAY
start whatever you need

At least XFCE runs fine in such "sandbox". It also works fine when I need
more than one instance of Netscape 4 (of course, I'm not starting Xnest
for netscape :) just redefining HOME environment). Maybe KDE will start in
such "sandbox".

If some tool wants to read/write something to
/tmp/SOMETHING_DERIVED_FROM_YOU_LOGIN_ONLY, you may try to define TMPDIR,
but usually those tools are too dumb to pay attention to this environment
variable. :(

On 29 Mar 2002, Joe Klemmer wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-03-29 at 13:42, Dmitry DELTA Malykhanov wrote:
>
> > I'm using Xnest X server when I want to try new window manager, so I don't
> > have to logout/login back at all. It's usually in the separate package and
> > not a part of the default installation -- you may need to install it.
> >
> > and then it's quite easy:
> >
> > $ Xnest :1 & # or whatever the display number you like
> > $ your_new_wm -display :1
>
> 	Thanks Dmitry.  It doesn't seem to like some of the wm's if you run
> them like this but I remember from the pre-historic times that you just
> need to exec xterm then start the wm from in there.  This worked for
> twm, mwm & sawfish (mostly).  It didn't work for kde, but I'm not at all
> sure I know how to start kde in the first place.  :-)

--
It's me -- Delta at SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

"I don't advise it, citizen, mn-e-eh... I don't advise it. You'll be eaten."