Re: Bug#864166: release-notes: proofreading sweep - issues.dbk
Julien Cristau wrote:
> Niels Thykier wrote:
>> Justin B Rye:
>>> I was assuming otherwise because the first symptom I ran into was that
>>> running startx in the absence of xserver-xorg-legacy gave me an X
>>> session with non-functional mouse and keyboard.
>>>
>>> But when I check now, installing every available xserver-xorg-*
>>> package in main including -legacy as well as -input-libinput makes no
>>> difference to that. On a testbed stretch machine with functional
>>> logind and so on but with an old KMS-incapable graphics card, I
>>> haven't found any way of making startx usable.
>>
>> Not sure what is going there. But I haven't used startx for years until
>> I learned of this feature, so I am probably not the right person to ask
>> what is going on/why it doesn't work.
>>
>>> Switching over to lightdm I can get a usable session without -legacy
>>> as long as I have -input-libinput. So I'm afraid I have no idea
>>> what's going on, or even how many problems there are.
>>
>> As I understand it, lightdm will start X as root unconditionally, so
>> that will work with or without -legacy. You want -legacy when using gdm
>> (or startx) plus have "old drivers".
>>
>> * @debian-x: Is the above correct?
>>
> Yes, any reasonable (read: KMS) setup will work fine without -legacy.
> In the absence of KMS (e.g. virtualbox, or new hardware not supported by
> the drivers we ship), you'll need either -legacy or a DM that hasn't
> been updated to starting X as non-root yet.
So if I *do* have all the xserver-xorg-* packages installed (and
logind and so on), it's expected that everything should work, even on
an antique graphics card? For me, startx refuses to work on stretch -
it starts, but won't accept input. Switching to lightdm fixes it.
I hope this glitch isn't going to be a widespread result of 8-to-9
dist-upgrades, because the other mystery issue I keep encountering
breaks networking, and dead console plus dead SSH is a pain.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
Reply to: