[Mageia-dev] ANN: X11 now starts on tty1

Sun Dec 18 13:03:56 CET 2011

'Twas brillig, and Maarten Vanraes at 18/12/11 11:46 did gyre and gimble:
+> Op zondag 18 december 2011 11:54:17 schreef Colin Guthrie:
+>> 'Twas brillig, and Anssi Hannula at 18/12/11 10:32 did gyre and gimble:
+>>> For the record, attached are three alternative [1] untested
+>>> proof-of-concept patches that make kernel start on vt7.
+>>
+>> Personally I'm not a fan of sticking to vt7. As I said in an earlier
+>> thread, if the primary use case of the machine is graphical, then why
+>> start at 7? It's an arbitrary choice that fitted in with other uses when
+>> it was first introduced, but these days it's pretty backwards when
+>> considered on it's own. The only reason to preserve it is out of habit
+>> and I think that this is (generally speaking) the worst possible premise
+>> to base decisions on. I mean, if we want to let people use fast user
+>> switching easily they first have to learn first about vt switch command
+>> ctrl+alt+Fn. Then they have to learn that the first login is on 7 and
+>> the subsequent ones are on 8 etc. This doesn't make sense...
+>>
+>> What *should* happen is that the first one is 1.. the second one is 2 etc.
+>>
+>> When I'm in gnome, and I switch to tty2 for the first time, rather than
+>> getty appearing wouldn't it be better if the gdm prompt appeared for a
+>> second graphical login?
+>>
+>> I'm not suggesting that we ditch text logins completely, but I'm just
+>> saying that we should try and make things generally smoother if they
+>> user has already opted for a graphical system.
+>>
+>> Switching to e.g. 7 or 8 should maybe default to providing a text login
+>> and gdm should maybe present a "give me a text login" option in which
+>> case that X server quits and getty replaces it.
+>>
+>> Anything unused should timeout and quit (e.g. a getty on tty2 unused
+>> should exit and wait and be re-activated as appropriate later.
+>>
+>> All these things are possible (maybe not without upstream support, but I
+>> can ask Ray about the general plans here from a gdm perspective).
+>>
+>>
+>> Just for reference this is how the seat extender USB things work. Little
+>> thin clients that you plug into USB that give you a keyboard mouse and
+>> display. When you plug it in for the first time, it registers a new seat
+>> and then gives you a gdm login prompt. I don't think mutli user should
+>> be much different from multi-seat in this regard.
+>>
+>>> BTW, I know fedora uses vt1 for X, but what about other distros, e.g.
+>>> Ubuntu/Debian?
+>>
+>> I don't think they default to it but plenty people try to change it to
+>> that according to Google.
+>>
+>>
+>> Col
+> 
+> 
+> theoretically, i'd be in favor of on-demand vt allocation, be it graphical or 
+> textbased.
+> 
+> i'd be ok with a session starting when going to other vt (default session, be 
+> it a dm or a textbased login.) 
+
+Yup, this is generally what I'd propose.
+
+> however, the dm should allow to fall back to 
+> textbased, but there we run into a problem:
+> 
+> what if X is failing, you can't go back to text-login, so that's a nono
+> 
+> perhaps we could document that we'd preallocate F12 or something for text-
+> based emergency, but then noone would know...
+
+Yeah, as above, I was suggesting that e.g. 7&8 were always text logins.
+
+> I donno, if we don't have textbased by default, then surely vt1 has to be 
+> forcably text-based...
+
+> new X sessions are started from the old session, so i vote that CTRL+ALT+FX 
+> spawns a text-based login.
+
+They can be, but I'd vote that this should change. e.g. if you have a
+setup where you "typically" have two users logged in and session 1 is
+always "Dad" and session 2 is always "Mum", if Mum knows that she does
+ctl+alt+F2 to switch to her session when she is logged in, however in
+order to login, Dad has to already be logged in and either select the
+Switch User option, or do so from a logged screen.
+
+But say there has been a power cut and the machine is rebooted, Dad
+hasn't logged in but Mum wants to use "her" session on VT2 because
+that's what they are both used to.
+
+If she presses ctl+alt+f2 when at the login prompt, all she sees is a
+text login, this will be confusing to her. However if it spawns a new
+graphical login, then she'll appreciate she's not logged in yet and log in.
+
+So stand by my original suggestion that if you are running a graphical
+target, Switching to a TTY to get a "login prompt" should show you a
+graphical login prompt. If however you are only in the text level
+(multi-user.target) then you should be given text logins.
+
+Col
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
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