Re: How to restart the X server under Debian?

[Digby Tarvin <digbyt@acm.org>]

On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 04:26:01PM -0500, Ryan Nowakowski wrote:
> On Tue, May 23, 2006 at 11:16:46PM +0200, Colin Finck wrote:
> > I need to restart the X server (XFree86 4.3.0) under Debian Sarge with a
> > script or program.
> > On other Linux systems, I now that I can use "init 3" to terminate the X
> > server and then use "startx" to start it again, but on my Debian system this
> > does not work.
> 
> Debian doesn't use runlevels to detemine when to run X.  X is run by
> using startx[1] or a graphical login manager (xdm,kdm,gdm).

The systems with use runlevels to start and stop X also use
a display manager (xdm/kdm/gdm) to do it, and usuallt have
start X available for manual starts.

What is different in Debian is that if a display manager is installed
it (and hence X) will be started in all multi-user runlevels.

Other distributions traditionally start the display manager in runlevel
5 but not 3, allowing a change of run level as a convenient way to
reconfigure the services running on a system.

And again, we are just talking defaults here. Debian can be made to
behave in the traditional way by updating the contents of the
/etc/rcR.d directory, and selecting the desired initial runlevel
in /etc/inittab (the default being 2):

	# The default runlevel.
	id:2:initdefault:


Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                          digbyt(at)digbyt.com
http://www.digbyt.com