Question:

Various Antelope X applications fail when connecting from a remote Linux machine with a recent Xserver, eg X.org 6.8.1. From rtm or dbevents, we see:

 X Error of failed request:  BadAtom (invalid Atom parameter)
 Major opcode of failed request:  18 (X_ChangeProperty)
 Atom id in failed request:  0xed
 Serial number of failed request:  12
 Current serial number in output stream:  15

Answer:

Unfortunately, this is not a problem which BRTT can address. There are many X-servers available, and not all of them work well with different clients. (The problem is particularly noticeable with Windows servers). The problems are obscure.

We test with a few X servers: standard X for Suns, the default X-server on a few Linux releases (we or other people have tried SuSE, Red Hat, and Mandrake; probably someone is using Debian), and Darwin (Xfree86, ported by Apple). However, we can't guarantee compatibility with every possible flavor.

As you say, this could be an interaction with tcl/tk. Does wish work? dbloc2? dbpick? How about dbe? What about antelope_update, dbbuild, rtdemo or register_antelope? Do standard x windows applications like xterm work?

If all these other programs work, you might try commenting out the following lines in $ANTELOPE/bin/rtm, and see if that makes any difference:

#if {[catch "icontoplevel .icon $env(ANTELOPE)/data/tcl/rtm/rtm.gif" out] 0} {  
#    wm iconwindow . .icon
#}

Looking through google groups for the error message below, I found a suggestion of using the -Y flag to ssh (from your initial login) when you login to the server. (Be sure your DISPLAY variable is set properly). If this fails, then I think you should look for a different X server. Perhaps it's the most recent revision which is causing problems, and you should just back up to a previous release.