X server refuses client connections after a while

Wed Nov 30 10:28:29 PST 2005

Dear Developers,

I run into a serious problem using my complex application. I'm not sure if
it is an X.org bug or not. It is also possible that something makes the X
server to stop proper working. Here are the details:

I run Firefox and mplayer-plugin for video playing in an infinite loop (I
also play Macromedia flash files, too).

What first happened was the networking restarted at 18:14:57
(/var/log/messages). The reason for this is unknown. Nobody wanted to
restart the networking on this machine (it is a DHCP workstation).

Nov 29 18:14:43 linux kernel: eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa
0x45E1
Nov 29 18:14:57 linux modify_resolvconf: Service dhcpcd modified
/etc/resolv.con
f. See info block in this file
Nov 29 18:14:57 linux dhcpcd[3566]: infinite IP address lease time. Exiting

Now networking works OK (just like before), but the X server starts to work
odd. The Xorg.0.log file starts to contain the following entries:

AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:14:58 2005: 4388 X: client 21 rejected from local host
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:14:59 2005: 4388 X: client 21 rejected from local host
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:15:00 2005: 4388 X: client 21 rejected from local host
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:15:01 2005: 4388 X: client 21 rejected from local host
..................................................................
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:15:41 2005: 4388 X: client 21 rejected from local host
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:15:42 2005: 4388 X: client 21 rejected from local host
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:15:44 2005: 4388 X: client 21 rejected from local host
(WW) Open APM failed (/dev/apm_bios) (No such device)
(II) Mouse[1]: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:15:45 2005: 4388 X: client 21 rejected from local host
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:15:47 2005: 4388 X: client 19 rejected from local host
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:15:48 2005: 4388 X: client 19 rejected from local host
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:15:49 2005: 4388 X: client 19 rejected from local host
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:15:50 2005: 4388 X: client 19 rejected from local host
AUDIT: Tue Nov 29 18:15:51 2005: 4388 X: client 19 rejected from local host

I found the (WW) entry on the X.org site as a FAQ issue. Currently I don't
know if it matters or not because I can't check currently the APM settings
for this machine. So I cannot decide if APM corrections may solve my problem
or not. And, in addition, the APM issue happened 45 seconds later than the
rejection of client 21.

I experience that from now on the X server refuses to put new windows on the
display and the currently running Firefox application is also unavailable to
load new movie files (using the 'firefox -remote "OpenURL(file:filename.ext)"
&' command).

In ~/.xsession-errors I found the following, parallel:

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

xset:  unable to open display ":0"
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

xset:  unable to open display ":0"
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

xset:  unable to open display ":0"
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

You may be interested why is xset run. In fact, we have to run xset every
second because we have to ensure that the display is on or off. (In fact if
we don't send an xset command to force the display off, then it will
"automatically" switch on in a few seconds. This is not true for forcing the
display to switch on, because it is enough to send an xset forcing in about
each 5 minute. However, for convenience, we send the xset shot every second.
I'm not sure that it is a perfect solution but it works and I'm also not
sure if the display won't be damaged with such a large amount of xset shot.)

It is also experienced that sometimes the X server comes back for a while.
Then it goes back to refuse the requests. But it is mainly silent from now
on.

There are also similar entries in Xorg.0.log:

xset:  unable to open display ":0"
DISPLAY empty or unusable
DISPLAY=:0
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

I also found that the (WW) and the (II) entries came back at 18:31 (twice),
18:36 and 18:38. But later there was no such behaviour.

In /var/log/messages I found that

Nov 29 18:36:27 linux kernel: alps.c: E6 report: 00 00 64
Nov 29 18:36:27 linux kernel: alps.c: E7 report: 10 00 64
Nov 29 18:36:27 linux kernel: evdev_connect: evdev c1752280 handle c175229c
name
 event2
Nov 29 18:36:27 linux kernel: input: ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse on
isa0060/serio 1

It seems that some messages from certain hardware can cause the X server to
work confused. But I'm not sure. For me this behaviour is so odd that I
really don't know where to fix this problem. And all of these strange
hardware reports are very unclear for me --- why they come? I suspected a
hardware error for my machine, but currently none of the benchmarks approve
my suspection.

It is sure that the /etc/resolv.conf file and some other networking related
ones are changed at about 18:14, automatically by the system:

root at dhcppc2:/var/run/sysconfig > ls -al
total 25
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root 224 2005-11-29 18:15 .
drwxr-xr-x  14 root root 872 2005-11-29 17:53 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  61 2005-11-29 18:15 if-eth0
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  37 2005-11-29 18:15 if-lo
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  32 2005-11-29 17:53 if-sit0
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   7 2005-11-29 18:15 ifup-eth0
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   7 2005-11-29 18:15 ifup-lo
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  11 2005-11-29 18:15 network
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  72 2005-11-29 18:15 tmp

What I use is SuSE-9.2.

Please help me to find a way to solve this problem! Any help is greatly
appreciated. Unfortunately it is very difficult to reproduce this behaviour.
However, I have to say that if I make a fake ~/.Xauthority file, I get
similar results (I cannot start new applications, the error messages are
very similar). Writing back the original ~/.Xauthority file, the X server is
working again properly.

Finally, I read a very similar problem on
http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2003/04/msg00002.html --- but this issue is
also unsolved and it was unreproducible. It was back in 2002. I got the idea
to try a corrupt ~/.Xauthority file and now I can do a very similar crash by
myself.

Thank you in advance.

Regards,
Zoltan Kovacs
sysadmin, Particio BT.
http://particio.com
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