Dear all,

as many of you have reported, there are major issues with the version
of NoMachine's NX libraries that are currently provided on
packages.x2go.org and in X2Go's Ubuntu Launchpad.

The occurring crashes of X2Go sessions do not relate to the code
itself but to the way the code (from X2Go Git) currently is built
(i.e. compiled and packaged). Only five weeks ago, Alex, Reinhard and
Mike could narrow the problems down to the build method being used.

The issues probably also apply to the way other NX related projects
build their (Debian-ic) packages. So, if anyone needs more details on
this, feel free to contact us on this list.

As a matter of fact, we currently can't consider the available NX
libraries provided on packages.x2go.org (with obvious effect on
x2goagent) as ,,stable'' at all; session crashes can easily be
reproduced on various setups. Certain actions within the X2Go session
cause naughty reconnect or disconnect messages for the client user and
many times the sessions die seemingly without reason. This problem
is due to NX libraries being built against the distribution's X
server development files and not against the development files of
nx-X11 (Xserver provided by NoMachine). Unfortunately, the former has
been state-of-the-art for the Debian-like packages ever since. We are
working on a new way of building those packages, see below.

As there have been many complaints we'll respond by offering
intermediate packages that do not contain these problems. However,
these packages have been built in a non-Debian state-of-the-art way
and the solution provided from us is only a temporary workaround until
we have solved the package build method for these packages.

Alex has built packages using a non-Git based build environment, one
we used before we changed to working with Git. The provided packages
have the same package names as found in Git, they also have a slightly
higher version number so your systems will upgrade easily if you
use the ,,workaround'' package set:

libxcomp3 libxcompext3 libxcompshad3

These new packages should do their job well, as we can't reproduce the
reported crashes with them anymore.

Currently, we are working with high pressure on cleanly-built NX
packages (see: Git project nx-libs.git, test branch, also
x2goagent.git, test branch), so that we can provide Git based NX
packages soon again.

DEBIAN

       If you want to use those packages on Debian, please make    

sure that you have

deb http://packages.x2go.org/debain squeeze main

(or wheezy main, sid main) as package source configured in your APT system.

If that is the case simply upgrade the above named packages and then
you should get the workaround x2goagent/NX packages installed.

$ apt-get update $ apt-get install libxcomp3 libxcompext3 libxcompshad3

If encountering errors during installation, also make sure to
uninstall all development packages around NX libs / x2goagent before
upgrading to the workaround package set:

$ apt-get remove libxcomp-dev libxcompshad-dev libxcompext-dev $ apt-get remove libxcomp3-dbg libxcompshad3-dbg libxcompext3-dbg

We'll keep the NX workaround packages in the "main" area of our Debian repos as long as needed. You'll still have access to the git based
packages using the "heuler" area. (deb http://packages.x2go.org/debian
squeeze heuler).

UBUNTU

For people who use Ubuntu GNU/Linux and install X2Go from Launchpad
the solution is not as simple. We have provided tar.gz files
containing the needed packages. Download the tar.gz file appropriate
for your Ubuntu version from

http://packages.x2go.org/nx-3.5-workaround/ubuntu/

Extract your downloaded tarball (=tar.gz file) and install packages
manually (e.g. for Ubuntu oneiric):

$ mkdir ubuntu-x2go $ cd ubuntu-x2go $ wget
http://packages.x2go.org/nx-3.5-workaround/ubuntu/nx-3.5-workaround_ubuntu-o... $ tar -xvzf nx-3.5-workaround_ubuntu-oneiric.tar.gz $ eval $(dpkg-architecture -s) $ dpkg -i *${DEB_HOST_ARCH}*.deb

When encountering problems, also make sure to remove the development packages around x2goagent/NX before installation of the workaround packages:

$ apt-get remove libxcomp-dev libxcompshad-dev libxcompext-dev $ apt-get remove libxcomp3-dbg libxcompshad3-dbg libxcompext3-dbg

This is a temporary solution for the time we can't guarantee that the
Git based built packages are stable. From our perspective stability
should come first, but of course we will try hard to solve the build
problem so that we can use our X2Go Git based build environment for
NX libs, as well (again).

Regards,

Heinz & Alex & Mike

--

DAS-NETZWERKTEAM mike gabriel, dorfstr. 27, 24245 barmissen fon: +49 (4302) 281418, fax: +49 (4302) 281419

GnuPG Key ID 0xB588399B mail: mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de, http://das-netzwerkteam.de

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