From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S933436Ab2AIVLk (ORCPT ); Mon, 9 Jan 2012 16:11:40 -0500 Received: from cdptpa-omtalb.mail.rr.com ([75.180.132.120]:32554 "EHLO cdptpa-omtalb.mail.rr.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S933062Ab2AIVLi (ORCPT ); Mon, 9 Jan 2012 16:11:38 -0500 X-Authority-Analysis: v=2.0 cv=AqJsLZBP c=1 sm=0 a=/DbS/tiKggfTkRRHPZEB4g==:17 a=zQGhUK9Iw4MA:10 a=8nJEP1OIZ-IA:10 a=Lzabj1l8GfN3Mhb02_wA:9 a=dp46X55juV-uD1xln6gA:7 a=wPNLvfGTeEIA:10 a=/DbS/tiKggfTkRRHPZEB4g==:117 X-Cloudmark-Score: 0 X-Originating-IP: 67.78.168.186 Message-ID: <4F0B5808.2010900@cfl.rr.com> Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:11:36 -0500 From: Phillip Susi User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:8.0) Gecko/20111105 Thunderbird/8.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Greg KH CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Multiple consoles Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org I was considering some questions I read about setting up a multi-seat system where you have two separate sets of displays, keyboards, mice, and X servers. The problem someone noticed is that if you run the second X server on tty8, then you have to switch the console to tty8 to activate it, which disables the primary X server. It occurred to me that there ought to be an entirely separate set of virtual consoles bound to the second seat, and the second X server ought to run on one of those vcs. Or of course, you could choose to log into the console and not bother with X. Looking at drivers/tty/vt/vt.c, it appears that it was written assuming that there is just one linux console. It appears to use global variables for keeping track of which vc is active, etc, rather than creating one or more console devices, and store the vc multiplexing information in those devices. So to fix this, vt.c and keyboard.c would need significantly refactored to remove the global variables and create a console device to bind vcs, keyboards, and displays to, and then you could create a second one if you wanted. Does this make sense or am I missing something?