X11 remote application timeout

Question

I am in need of a way to decrease the timeout my X server has on remote applications. Currently X11 will keep an application on the display for a very long time (> 30min) after removing the Ethernet connection. I am needing to timeout within 10-30 seconds of loss of communication with the application.

I am running a standard Xorg server with no modification made to it. I have tried numerous methods for doing this. I have tried using the -to option on the X server but this does not seem to have any effect. I have also tried messing with the TCP properties using sysctl. I have set the tcp_keepalive_* properties to values which should give me the timeout needed but this also does not seem to have an effect on the timeout.

Also, the remote applications are not using SSH tunneling to connect to the server. It is an open sever on a secure connection so tunneling is not needed. The timeout mechanism must be done on the server side as I have no control over the applications.

Anyone have any ideas how to get the needed behavior from the X server?

Answer 1

The X server doesn't have client timeouts. Anything you see that looks like one is TCP's doing, not X's.

If you're lucky, the application you're talking to responds to the _NET_WM_PING protocol (most modern toolkits do this for you internally). If you can at least control the window manager you're using, you could modify it to send ping messages to all your running apps and blow them away with XKillClient if they don't respond promptly.