28,661 questions
Update 5/14/21 10:02am MST: Installed an older version of Cygwin/X (2.11.1) and it worked. Various posts on forums suggest there may be an issue with Personal Firewall. My research continues. Kind regards, -Randy
Windows 10 version 1909 breaks Cygwin/X?
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Randy Galbraith
16
Reputation points
Hello Everyone.
Recently our Windows support team pushed out the 1909 update to Windows 10. Now when I run the startx command it ends with:
xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused
xinit: server error
I installed the latest version of Cygwin (3.2.0) however the error continues. Here are my Windows version details:
Edition: Windows 10 Enterprise
Version: 1909
OS build: 18363.1256
I suspect the push of 1909 may have delivered a configuration change. I say that because I tested Cygwin 3.2.0 here at home and it works. Admittedly my Windows 10 at home is a different version (Windows 10 Home, 20H2, 19042.985).
Any insight on what may be happening will be appreciated. Many in our development team have for the moment been reduced to terminal command line access.
Kind regards,
-Randy Galbraith
Windows for business | Windows Client for IT Pros | User experience | Other
3 answers
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Randy Galbraith 16 Reputation points
2021-05-20T22:54:35.643+00:00 Hi Everyone.
Jon Turney on Cgywin mailing list provided some insight. Further research strongly suggested our issue relates to the Citrix ICA client. Our developers who use company laptops were not impacted, whereas those who access Windows 10 via Citrix were.
We still do not have a solution. However one of my colleagues discovered a work-around. The act of changing this registry key allows X-Windows to start:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Citrix\CtxHook\AppInit_Dlls\Multiple Monitor Hook\Flag from 0 to 1
Unfortunately this change must be done after each reboot and before starting X-Windows. Why this works is unknown to us.
Kind regards, -Randy
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Teemo Tang 11,466 Reputation points2021-05-17T06:07:36.383+00:00 Hi Randy,
Glad to hear that you have found out the cause for this issue. Thanks for sharing the workaround, yes, roll back to previous usable driver is a common method to fix update or compatibility issue, hope your experience will help other community members facing similar problems.
If you need further assistance, feel free to let me know.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Randy Galbraith 16 Reputation points
2021-05-17T14:18:43.883+00:00 Hi TeemoTang.
Thanks for responding. A working copy of 2.11.1 is not tenable. We've been using Windows + Cygwin/X since 2007 wherein both have been upgraded as needed for functionality and security fixes. To recap: Cygwin 3.1.7 was running on Windows 10 1809. Windows 10 1909 was pushed and X-Windows via Cygwin failed. I tried 3.2.0 (latest) and that too failed. I got a report that 2.11.1 worked and my testing showed that it did. But, alas, it too now fails.
I understand your comment about "usable driver" and agree. Just to be clear though, Cygwin is not a driver. As per cygwin.com it is: "a large collection of GNU and Open Source tools which provide functionality similar to a Linux distribution on Windows. And a DLL (cygwin1.dll) which provides substantial POSIX API functionality."
In summary: We need to find & resolve the root cause.
Kind regards, -Randy
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Teemo Tang 11,466 Reputation points
2021-05-18T06:13:40.583+00:00 Well, I see... but root cause analysis is beyond scope of forums support so if further assistance were needed you could open a request ticket with Microsoft support.
https://support.serviceshub.microsoft.com/supportforbusiness -
Randy Galbraith 16 Reputation points
2021-05-18T13:25:49.697+00:00 Hi TeemoTang. I'm now in contact with our desktop support folks within the large company I work with. If needed I'll let them know about the support.serviceshub.microsoft.com option. On the other hand if they're able to resolve the problem (for example, by unblocking ports 6000 and 6001) I'll drop and report that here. Kind regards, -Randy
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Teemo Tang 11,466 Reputation points
2021-05-19T08:17:18.013+00:00 Ok, a reasonable practice. look forward to your good news
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