what could "use up" X forwarding connections?

[JD]

On 10/03/2010 03:27 PM, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
> Tom Horsley wrote:
>> Anyone have any clues about what could "use up" some resource
>> used to create a forwarded X connection (ssh -X)?
>>
>> I've got these testbeds that run 24/7 on random collections
>> of both real and virtual machines, and they are all started
>> from inside a VNC session using ssh -X to get to the target
>> test machine. The theory is that any test which needs a X
>> server will be happy with the VNC server.
>>
>> After running for a few months, tests sometime start failing
>> because they can't open the X server. Reboot the host (which
>> is running fedora 13) and recreate the VNC server and things
>> work again.
>>
>> Seems like something is getting "used up" that the reboot
>> cleans up, but I haven't been able to find out what
>> that something is :-).
> I saw something similar on fedora 13 some time ago.
>
> Connections failing because the pseudo-file (Unix socket)
>    /tmp/.X11-unix
> had been deleted for some reason.
>
> In my case it was apparently a tmpwatch script cleaning
> away something more than what it should have.
>
> I never understood if the problem was with stuff from
> Fedora 13 (atime, ctime, mtime flags to tmpwatch, effects of
> relatime...) or from other vendors, as this machine has
> additional proprietary software installed (including cronjobs).
>
> It has been working for a few weeks now; maybe an update fixed it.
> Not sure.
>
Tom, what exactly is the error message, and is it at the vnc server
or at the vnc client?