Set window manager's meta key depending on connected Xserver

Question

Situation

A linux server is running an xdm supporting XDMCP, it is connected to from various different Linux and OS X boxes using XDMCP via an X -query <server> command.

Once the user is logged in the window manager is started, which is mostly controlled from the keyboard using an assigned meta key.

Problem

The assigned meta key needs to depend on the platform of the box that connects to the linux server. How do I figure out what the platform is behind the connected X server?

Thoughts

I cannot use the DISPLAY environment variable to switch on, the IPs of the connecting boxes are assigned by DHCP and give no clue what the platform of the box is.

I know the -class option to X can be used to set the display class, which then could be used to set defaults for the various display classes in Xresources. However I don't know how to get the class of the connected Xserver from the command line (or a little custom C program) and furthermore, I don't know how to get the value of an Xresource that would be configured with that class.

Ideally the used meta key could be configured on the box running the X server, so that the linux server running the xdm does not need any reconfiguration when a new type of platform is introduced in the setup.

What is the best way to go about this? Is it possible to determine the platform the X server is running on? Can some configuration option be passed from the Xserver to the window manager scripts? Is there a better way to resolve this?

Answer 1

This particular problem would be easy to solve if you set up keyboard mappings so that the same keysym and modifier is assigned to the Meta key everywhere.

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You can get some information about the server via the xrdb program. The server defines some property which xrdb makes available through preprocessing. You can print them out with xrdb -symbols. For example,

xrdb -Dsymbols | sed -n 's/-DSERVERHOST=//p'

prints the hostname of the X server. You can define specific resources for a particular server host with C preprocessing constructs:

#ifdef SRVR_darkstar
…
#endif

Here's a shell script that turns xrdb symbols into shell environment variables. Use it with something like eval "$(xrdb_sh_prefix=X_ xrdb-sh)".

#!/bin/sh
# Access xrdb #define's from the shell

# For each binding that xrdb(1) would give to the preprocessor, print
# NAME=VALUE for -DNAME=VALUE.
# If $xrdb_sh_export is not empty, also print "export NAME".
# If $xrdb_sh_prefix is not empty, prefix it to each NAME in output.
# Shell metacharacters are preceded by `\' in VALUEs. NAMEs are
# assumed to be admissible C identifiers.
# Example:
#   xrdb_sh_export=y xrdb_sh_prefix=X_ xrdb-sh
# outputs somthing like
#    X_SERVERHOST=drongo
#    export X_SERVERHOST
#    X_VENDOR=The\ XFree86\ Project\,\ Inc
#    export X_VENDOR
# ...
# The output of this program is typically used in a Bourne shell thus:
#   eval "`xrdb_sh_prefix=X_ xrdb-sh`"

if [ -n "$xrdb_sh_export" ]; then
  awk_export='print "export " name'
fi
awk -v prefix="$xrdb_sh_prefix" '
  /^-D/ {
    $0 = substr($0, 3)
    eq = match($0, /=/)
    name = (prefix) (eq ? substr($0, 1, eq-1) : $0)
    if (eq) {
        $0 = substr($0, eq+1)
        sub(/^\"/, ""); sub(/\"$/, "")
        gsub(/[^0-9A-Z_a-z]/, "\\\\&")
    } else {
        $0 = ""
    }
    print name "=" $0
    '"$awk_export"'
  }
  /^exit=[0-9]+$/ {sub(/^.*=/, ""); exit $0}
' <<EOF
`{ xrdb "$@" -symbols || echo exit=$?; } | $sort || echo exit=$?`
EOF

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Another approach would be to set custom properties on the root window from the server side, for example with xprop. Query those properties (again with xprop) from the client side.

xprop -set Server_arch "$(uname -m)"