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UNIX: How To Change Your Window Manager To The Motif Window Manager (mwm)

How to run Motif window manager ('mwm') on a Glue or WAM workstation?

You should be able to put the following into your ".environment" file:

 
    eval `/usr/local/scripts/twig motif`
    eval `/usr/local/scripts/twig motif2`
    setenv WINDOW_MANAGER /afs/glue.umd.edu/software/motif-1.2.2/bin/mwm

The reason I say "should" is that it may not work on all platforms - I found one which it did not work on, but it was fixed.

Platform-related problems may stem from an entry missing from the directory:

    /afs/glue.umd.edu/software/motif-1.2.2/.bin

There are three Sun platforms defined for running 'mwm', with links for nine others to those basic three. If you have problems getting 'mwm' to run, check to make sure your machine type is reflected in the files.

To do this, type:

    uname -m

to determine the hardware type, then:

    uname -a

to determine the OS type. Here's an example:

    altair> uname -m
    sun4u
    altair> uname -a
    SunOS altair.umd.edu 5.5 Generic_103093-13 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-1
    altair>

The OS type is in the third column of output from the 'uname -a' command. The current likely values are "4.1.1", "4.1.4", "5.4", "5.5" and "5.5.1". The first two are SunOS versions, the latter three are Solaris versions. (Solaris 2.4 == SunOS 5.4; Solaris 2.5 == SunOS 5.5.)

From the first command, we see the hardware type is "sun4u", and from the second we see that the OS is Solaris 2.5 (which is SunOS 5.5 - note the third value).

Now look in the directory:

    /afs/glue.umd.edu/software/motif-1.2.2/.bin

and see if there's a file or link for "sun4u_55". We see there is, so that should work.