On Wed, 11 Feb 1998, Jameson Burt wrote: > Daniel Martin suggested a magical solution, one his mail prodded me to use. > I now have an X-session for myself on <cntl><alt>F7, > one X-session for my wife on <cntl><alt>F8, > one X-session for my child on <cntl><alt>F9. > WOW > > Mail to debian-users on January 4, 1998, by Remco Blaakmeer showed how to do > this in xdm. He suggested a clean solution to alter /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers to > something like > :0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt07 :0 -bpp 16 > :1 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt08 :1 -bpp 8 > which also gives you 16-bit color on one console and 8-bit color on the other. > I myself now use > :0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt7 :0 > :1 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt8 :1 > :2 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt9 :2 > You need change no other files. However, for beauty, you might alter > /etc/X11/xdm/xdm-config. > > The use of vt08 and :1 at the end of the above lines IS APPARENTLY > UNDOCUMENTED, at least in the Debian distribution. These appendages are > necessary! Without :2 at the end, I get no xdm login rectangle, just a grey > screen, for <cntl><alt>F9. Without the vt09 appendage for the third server, > a > video-timing problem appears so that most of the consoles become unuseable, > having short random color stripes. None of these appendages are needed for > the :0 server, though I add them for consistency.
Well, their use is documented, though I agree if you say that X is documented in too many places. The ":0", ":1" etc. are documented in 'man Xserver', the "vtXX" are documented in 'man Xfree86'. Apparently, every X server is supposed to accept the options mentioned in the former and Xfree86 adds some options mentioned in the latter. I can confirm the problems you have when you don't supply the vtXX options. I think that the X servers are fighting to get a console in that case and they can do unpredictable things in that case. The :<displaynumber> options are simply mandatory for any X server running locally for another display than :0. Very weird things happen when xdm fires up three X servers and they all start to think that they are display :0. > A bug report for xbase told about xdm multiple X-sessions working with > ethernet or ppp connected, but not when disconnected. I had this very > problem > with my ppp connection. I would get the following error with no ppp > Fatal server error: > XDMCP fatal error: Session declined No valid address > With ppp, if I turned off ppp, the xdm rectangle for login would dissappear, > although the cursor would still work. Then when I turned ppp back on, the > login rectangles would reappear. These problems disappeared when I followed > Remco's suggestion to append "vt8 :1" as above. I don't know what to say to this, since I have never used ppp. I have an ethernet connection to an internet backbone (WOW). > To get a consistent login console like the first default one, you can also > change the file /etc/X11/xdm/xdm-config. Amongst the entries there, I have > DisplayManager._0.authorize: true > DisplayManager._0.resources: /etc/X11/xdm/Xresources_0 > DisplayManager._0.setup: /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0 > DisplayManager._0.startup: /etc/X11/xdm/Xstartup_0 > DisplayManager._0.reset: /etc/X11/xdm/Xreset_0 > ! I copy the files for server 0 to those for server 1. > DisplayManager._1.authorize: true > DisplayManager._1.resources: /etc/X11/xdm/Xresources_1 > DisplayManager._1.setup: /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_1 > DisplayManager._1.startup: /etc/X11/xdm/Xstartup_1 > DisplayManager._1.reset: /etc/X11/xdm/Xreset_1 > ! I copy the files for server 0 to those for server 2. > DisplayManager._2.authorize: true > DisplayManager._2.resources: /etc/X11/xdm/Xresources_2 > DisplayManager._2.setup: /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_2 > DisplayManager._2.startup: /etc/X11/xdm/Xstartup_2 > DisplayManager._2.reset: /etc/X11/xdm/Xreset_2 > I then copied without change the files /etc/X11/xdm/*_0 files to > /etc/X11/xdm/*_1 and /etc/X11/xdm/*_2. There are four such files; eg, > /etc/X11/xdm/Xresources_2 . > > If you try this out, when you alter some of these xdm config files, you can > tell xdm to look again with > "ps -auxw |grep X" or "ps -auxw |grep vt", then enter > kill -SIGHUP pid-of-that-X Actually you'll have to give xdm the SIGHUP, not the X server. I have just sent a patch for /etc/init.d/xdm to a bug report, which will give it restart, reload and force-reload options. If this makes it into the next package, you can simply do '/etc/init.d/xdm reload' to reload xdm's config files. > If you wish to restart xdm, remember the dummy consoles like <cntl><alt>F2. > Go to /etc/init.d, enter "./xdm stop". You might check that "ps -auxw |grep > X" returns no processes. Then enter "./xdm start". With my patch that would be "./xdm restart". But most of the time you only want to reload the config files, not restart xdm. > The virtual desktops were magical. > These multiple X-sessions are just as magical. > WOW Yes. But remember that X servers tend to eat a lot of memory. So if you're low on memory, stick with one X server and a window manager that knows about virtual desktops. Remco -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
