Re: X11 stability
On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 02:32:19PM -0500, Derrick 'dman' Hudson wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 08:36:52AM -0800, nate wrote:
> [...]
> | as far as I know, most commercial X servers (IRIX, AIX, HPUX, Solaris)
> | do not allow switching either, at least I've never figured out how
> | to switch on those systems.
>
> It's not the X server, it's the kernel. The Alt-Ctrl-F[1-7] virtual
> console magic is linux-specific. Solaris doesn't have any comparable
> facility. That is one reason applications like 'screen' were
> developed.
>
> The SiS6326 video card I have (used in vesafb mode, at least) doesn't
> mind if I switch between X and a console. (I actually have 2 X
> displays, one on VC7 and one on VC8) It's a pretty cheap and basic
> video card, but it doesn't lock up. The worst I've seen is X dies
> (and gdm restarts it) if I switch to a VC too soon after logging in
> via gdm. The solution there is to wait a few seconds before
> switching.
I have such a video card - PCI rather than AGP - and I flip between X
and svgatextmode-ified 100x36 consoles. Occasionally the text mode
screen memory and font memory get corrupted when doing this, so when
flipping to a text console it comes up in psychedelic illegible
characters. The cure is to reinvoke svgatextmode, which reloads the
font memory, and either clear the screen or just wait until the
psychedelic bit scrolls off the top. It's never given me lockups, or
killed X. (Me no run gdm or fb, me log in at text console.)
Apart from that, this card is great as it allows fast pixel clocks in
text modes, so I can crank up the vertical refresh rate and still have
lots of characters on screen. Had to write my own ClockProg as
svgatextmode doesn't support it, but never mind.
Pigeon
Reply to: