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Re: GDM, getty and VTs



Le lundi 16 novembre 2009 à 13:55 +0100, Harald Braumann a écrit : 
> > Just because it is a tradition doesn’t mean it’s the correct way.
> So far I haven't seen any argument as to why it shouldn't be the correct
> way.

It’s broken because: 
      * there are race conditions in the way VTs are allocated; 
      * text consoles are statically allocated, which means there are
        too many for some users and not enough for some others; 
      * the display manager should run on the first VT.

> >       * New GDM upstream, as is, is completely broken. 
> That seems to be the only reason. But this is clearly a bug in GDM,
> that should be fixed there.

Yes, but there are better ways to fix bugs than mimicking already
existing bugs.

> If you want X on another tty, change it in /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers. If you
> need more ttys, add gettys to /etc/inittab. This system is so simple and
> flexible, that I don't see how you can improve on it.

Yeah, sure. Like, you know, dynamic VT allocation and X server.

> So the solution is to make GDM configurable by a parameter or a config
> file to set the vt it should start on. 

You really don’t know what you are talking about, do you?

> > I don’t see this as rocket science software, and it means: 
> >       * No useless getty processes are started. 
> I never considered this to be a real problem. 

I always consider it a problem when there are unneeded processes on the
system.

> >       * tty1 is always the first VT you log on, regardless of your
> >         setup. 
> I don't see this as an improvement. I always want X on the same tty, no
> matter in which order I do things. Or did I misunderstand something
> here?

X is not always on the same tty. It is only if you use an antiquity like
xdm. Even with startx, tty allocation is dynamic.

> >       * You can start an arbitrary number of text or graphical
> > consoles, without any configuration.
> Is this really a requirement? Where are the wishlist bugs of users
> demanding this? And anyway, a simple script that looks for the next
> free tty and spawns getty there solves this nice and easy.

No it does not. Especially since “looking for the next free tty” is not
a safe operation.

Cheers, 
-- 
 .''`.      Josselin Mouette
: :' :
`. `'   “I recommend you to learn English in hope that you in
  `-     future understand things”  -- Jörg Schilling

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