Re: xauth for my wife:WOW, xdm & multi X-windows
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
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