xiph.org: MGM troubleshooting

Troubleshooting the beast...

MGM is aimed at skilled users, not the 3l33T3 war3z crowd.

(1f U sp3ll l1k3 th1s, gu3ss wh1ch U R)

MGM was originally a script for my own use, but a few other folks liked it (not unintended) so I'm just going to fling it at the world at large. I'm not going to let it become a support load. I'm not interested in teaching newbies how to use X resources this time around, sorry.

That said, there are a few things that are tricky about using MGM, so I might as well save folks the time of slugging through misleading problems and list a few of the things that can go wrong below.

Weird Tk errors

It turns out Tk doesn't deal well with whitespace in X resources; it considers whitespace to be part of the entry, ends up being unable to look up colors like "Black ", and then just gives up. If you get something like the below:

Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method Tk::MainWindow::_Destroyed() is 
deprecated at /usr/lib/perl5/Tk/MainWindow.pm line 55.
Use of uninitialized value at /usr/lib/perl5/Tk/MainWindow.pm line 55.
821b47c () is not a hash at /usr/lib/perl5/Tk/MainWindow.pm line 55.
Abort

Error eval()ing ->module_run for Netstat: unknown color name "gray      " 
at /usr/lib/perl5/Tk/Submethods.pm line 37.

Chances are you have whitespace in your MGM resources. Emacs in font-lock mode has the tendency to insert tabs where you least expect. Check carefully for this.

It runs perfectly for a while then suddenly explodes

A few modules (diskuse and netstat for now) watch for changes in machine configuration and will trigger an update of the whole MGM window if, for example, a new filesystem appears in df.

If you're riding the limits of minimum sizing, it's possible that the window really needed to be bigger for the extra entry and instead the world ended. Similarly, forcibly disabling automatic updates (*reconfig: false) can cause things to break as MGM tries to monitor devices that no longer exist. Or, maybe you found a bug. If you did, drop us a line at mgm@xiph.org.

MGM will not get your whites whiter or your colors brighter. It will, however, sit there and look spiffy while sucking down a major honking wad of RAM.