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

Sun Dec 18 13:26:11 CET 2011

2011/12/18 Colin Guthrie <mageia at colin.guthr.ie>:
+> '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.
+>
+
+What happens in this new scheme if graphical server fails - this is
+happening more often than you think - this is not clear to me yet. If
+the x server crashes and the default is starting a DM and graphical
+login, what will happen then?
+
+What happens if a user wants to boot into run level 3? He will get a
+text prompt because neither x nor any DM has started yet - where does
+he land, on VT7?
+
+What happens when using SysReq keys?
+
+About displaying a graphical login - when I press Ctrl-Alt-Fn I do
+this to go to a text console, not to yet another x screen and I expect
+a prompt, not yet another graphical login.
+
+-- 
+wobo
+