Re: xauth for my wife:WOW, xdm & multi X-windows
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.
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.
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
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".
The virtual desktops were magical.
These multiple X-sessions are just as magical.
WOW
> This doesn't address your specific question, but what about this:
> I assume that when your wife uses linux, she normally logs in from the
> console (on one of the text mode consoles), and occasionally then
> wishes to run a few X applications. If so, then she can just do:
> startx -- :1
> This will give her her own X display (on the next available virtual
> console, probably number 8), and she need not mess with any xauth
> stuff. (just make certain that "Console" is in /etc/X11/Xserver)
> If you do this, you'll also probably want to make a symbolic link from
> ~/.xinit to ~/.xsession (startx uses .xinit, xdm uses .xsession).
> Supposedly, one should be able to get xdm to start up with two
> X servers on two different virtual consoles, (and therefore two login
> screens) but every time I've tried it it just hung my xdm.
>
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