From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ray Olszewski Subject: Re: auto start WM on second VT Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 10:47:12 -0700 Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.1.20050408102653.02048aa8@celine> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-newbie-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-newbie@vger.kernel.org At 08:24 AM 4/8/2005 -0500, James Miller wrote: >After all those complex problems with sound, let me ask for some help on >something that should be much easier to resolve. It should just be a >matter of automating something I currently do manually. This refers to the >same Debian unstable system I discussed in the sound card thread. > >I've become attached to some console programs and had been running them in >a sort of console window manager called "twin" on a second VT. Works >nicely (if you can get the right vga mode to work with your video card) >but there are some inconveniences--for example if you need to run some X >app when you try opening an email attachment or something. The combination >of those two problems led me to consider instead running a lightweight, >console-like WM on that second VT. I decided on ion3, since I've had some >experience with that. > >I discovered through some web searching that setting this up to work >"manually" was very easy under Debian. It was easy because Debian >apparently does not use an .xinitrc file found in the user's home dir when >starting up Xwindows on display :0 (hope I've said that at least somewhat >correctly). However if you create an .xinitrc file in your home directory >that points to a valid WM binary on your system, then start Xwindows on >display :1 in a second VT, it will use that .xinitrc file and get the WM >running on the second display. This can be either a second copy of the >same WM or a different WM altogether. One can alternate between the two by >use of the ctrl-alt-F7 and ctrl-alt-F8 keys. An example of the command >line way of doing this is to press ctrl-alt-F2 to get to the second VT and >a (login, then) command prompt. From the prompt, simply issue startx -- :1. > >Works fine. The question I'm currently trying to resolve however, is >getting the WM to start up automatically in the second VT. This should >happen either after I log into the system (using xdm), or, short of that, >automatically. I gather it can be done by editing inittab, though I'm not >sure of the exact syntax. I suppose it might also be accomplished by >editing/creating some xdm config file. A third way might involve tweaking >startx. And this is what I'd like to ask advice on. > >Finally, my question. Can anyone offer suggestions on ways of getting the >second WM running on display :1 automatically? E.g., after I log in to >xdm? Hope this will be as easy as it seems. First, let's clear up a bit of terminology. In your setup (stock Debian, no matter if Woody, Sarge, or Sid for this purpose), you have consoles running on VTs 1 to 6. You have xdm, then X itself after login, running on VT7 (as DISPLAY 0 - DISPLAY is an env variable that applies only to X sessions, not CLI consoles). When you do a "startx" from VT2, it actually starts X (as DISPLAY 1) on the first available VT, which is 8, not 2. (If you switch back to VT2 after you run startx, you'll still see a console that presents that command, followed by its output to STDOUT and STDERR, and that you can kill the X session from with a CTRL-C.) This is the standard way to start X from a console. If you want the console available, not tied up, detach the job ("startx &"). There are two basic ways to start X sessions (including a login manager like xdm or gdm) as part of init: 1. Via an entry in /etc/inittab . I think most mainline distros still do it this way (I know Slackwere did, using a different runlevel for X-based inits), but Debian does not. 2. Via an init file. This is how Debian does it, via /etc/init.d/xdm, plus a symlink fro /etc/rc2.d/ to it. Debian's approach makes it hard to start 2 X (or xdm) sessions as part of init, because the script is designed around the xdm session it starts being unique. To stay with this aproach, you'd need to write a custom script, or perhaps add some lines to an rclocal script if you've made one (it's not part of standard Debian). You *might* be better served by switching to (what I think of as) the Slackware approach, adding lines to /etc/inittab for consoles 7 and 8 that run xdm (or actual X logins), and removing the xdm script symlink from your default runlevel directory. If you want to take this approach, any Slackware user here should be able to give you a sample of what the inittab entry should look like ... I *think* is is just -- 7:23:respawn:/usr/bin/X11/xdm -- but I can't be certain because I don't have a working system here that uses this method of starting xdm, so I'm drawing on a memory that is years old. PS - Did you give up on the sound card, or get it working? Or are you still in the process of trying? - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs