CentOS - Jan 2010 - xterm clones on VNC problem

I've been scratching my head over this one after setting up VNC on
another existing server. Followed the instructions here
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/VNC-Server as usual. It worked
initially. However since this server is going to be installed in a
rather inconvenient place and having done pretty stupid things before,
I decided for the first time to try the portion that says

# Add the following line to ensure you always have an xterm available.
( while true ; do xterm ; done ) &

So that I don't inevitably do something like kill kde and find myself
unable to do anything.

The problem now is, for some reason, I get 4 xterm window after
restarting (or stop/start) vncserver. The symptoms now are

1. Consistently, of the four xterms window, #3 and #4 can be closed.
#1 and #2 will resurrect themselves.

*** Removing the while loop from /home/user/.vnc/xstartup does not change this.

2. if I comment out this line in /home/user/.vnc/xstartup
    exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
I will not get  this problem. At least there will only be one xterm
window in what I think is the primitive twm desktop.

3. If I then uncomment the xinitrc line, I get back 4 xterms window
after restarting vncserver. It's like KDE is somehow insisting on
running that while loop even after I've deleted it from the xstartup
file.

How do I fix this? Admittedly I could simply minimize the two xterm
windows and/or switch virtual desktop and ignore them. but obviously
something is wrong and it makes me uncomfortable.

Everything is 5.3 standard, I've not touched the default X11 config
nor xinitrc. Except I did do an yum update to current.

On 1/27/2010 11:36 AM, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote:
> I've been scratching my head over this one after setting up VNC on
> another existing server. Followed the instructions here
> http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/VNC-Server as usual. It worked
> initially. However since this server is going to be installed in a
> rather inconvenient place and having done pretty stupid things before,
> I decided for the first time to try the portion that says
>
> # Add the following line to ensure you always have an xterm available.
> ( while true ; do xterm ; done )&
>
> So that I don't inevitably do something like kill kde and find myself
> unable to do anything.
>
> The problem now is, for some reason, I get 4 xterm window after
> restarting (or stop/start) vncserver. The symptoms now are
>
> 1. Consistently, of the four xterms window, #3 and #4 can be closed.
> #1 and #2 will resurrect themselves.
>
> *** Removing the while loop from /home/user/.vnc/xstartup does not change
this.
>
> 2. if I comment out this line in /home/user/.vnc/xstartup
>      exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
> I will not get  this problem. At least there will only be one xterm
> window in what I think is the primitive twm desktop.
>
> 3. If I then uncomment the xinitrc line, I get back 4 xterms window
> after restarting vncserver. It's like KDE is somehow insisting on
> running that while loop even after I've deleted it from the xstartup
> file.
>
> How do I fix this? Admittedly I could simply minimize the two xterm
> windows and/or switch virtual desktop and ignore them. but obviously
> something is wrong and it makes me uncomfortable.
>
> Everything is 5.3 standard, I've not touched the default X11 config
> nor xinitrc. Except I did do an yum update to current.
I'm not sure about this specific issue, but I'd highly recommend using 
freenx instead of vncserver anywhere that it is possible to run nxclient 
or the NX client (windows/mac/linux) from www.nomachine.com on the 
client side.  Performance is much better and the sessions start on 
demand with the option to suspend or not when you disconnect.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com