How to use xconsole?

[Frank Mehnert <fm3@os.inf.tu-dresden.de>]

Hi Eric,

> I can't figure out how to see console messages while I'm using X (I'musing
> Gnome, if it matters).  I do recall that it was straightforward on earlier
> releases of Debian, but I can't recall how it was done.

> Now if I start xconsole after logging in, it displays an error "Can't
> open console".  I tried putting `xconsole &' at the end of
> /etc/gdm/Init/Default, but that only displayed a blank console while
> the login: prompt was visible.
>
>I imagine I'm missing something obvious ... any ideas?

It seems to be that the permissions of the /dev/xconsole have been changed
in potato. In slink the permissions are

  prw-r--r--   1 root     root         4084 Jun  8 07:50 /dev/xconsole

In potato they are

  prw-r-----    1 root     adm             0 Jun  8 17:29 /dev/xconsole

So it's your choice: Either get member of the adm group:

  su root
  addgroup <your_login_name> adm

or change the permissions of /dev/xconsole:

  su root
  chmod o+r /dev/xconsole

That's it.

Frank
-- 
Frank Mehnert
## Dept. of Computer Science, Dresden University of Technology, Germany ##
## E-Mail: fm3@os.inf.tu-dresden.de    http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/~fm3 ##