date & time at top of screen

[william.t.rankin]

In article <9102060058.AA11602 at xuucp.ch.apollo.hp.com> mja!aramini writes:
>Lately on my 3B-1 with 3.51 software the part of the line of text at the very
>top of the screen where the date and time are usually displayed, there instead
>will be a strip of stippled background pattern.  When this happens, logging
>out and back in again doesn't help, but rebooting does bring the date and time
>back, for a while at least, but eventually (like on the order of several
>hours)
>the date and time will disappear and are replaced by the stippled background
>pattern again.

>Can anyone shed some light on what may be going on here?

Sounds like your screen manager (smgr) is dying.
Do a "ps -fe" and see if 'smgr' is one on the processes.

>Is there something I can do to bring the date and time back when it disappears
>that is less drastic than rebooting?

login as root and run smgr again.  this should bring it back.
when this happened to me, my fix was to reload smgr from the
distribution disks.  it seems that it somehow had gotten itself
corrupted.

>-Michael Aramini
> 3B-1 at home:  ...!apollo!mja!aramini
> work:  aramini at apollo.com  -or-  ...!apollo!aramini

-bill rankin
wtr at bromo.att.com