Re: Display multiple virtual consoles on multiple displays

[rhkramer@gmail.com]

On Thursday, August 22, 2019 10:08:16 AM Dan Ritter wrote:
> Franklin, Jason wrote:
> > Greetings,
> > 
> > I'm working on a project that requires me to debug a running screen
> > locker.
> > 
> > Currently, my workflow involves switching between the screen locker and
> > virtual console #1 (/dev/tty1) using Ctrl-Alt-F1 and Ctrl-Alt-F7.  This
> > way, I can interact with the screen locker until I hit a break point.  I
> > then return to the first virtual terminal and step through the code.
> > 
> > This has been very helpful so far, but it's quite slow!
> > 
> > I have multiple displays, so it seems natural that I'd want to use one
> > display for the screen locker on F7, and one display for vim and gdb on
> > F1.
> > 
> > Is this possible?  Is it easy or difficult to achieve?
> 
> What you want is called multiseat configuration; it assumes that
> the N monitors are independent, and need to have their own
> keyboards and mice (though you can fake this with a KVM switch).
> 
> Most multiseat configs are X only.
> 
> There were two projects to make the VT system multiseat: kmscon
> and systemd-consoled. Both are defunct, and probably won't work.

I am an optimist (at least sometimes) ;-)  It seems to me there should be a 
way to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish.

Without really having thought this out (or being able to, due to my lack of 
facile familiarity with virtual machines and such), I wonder if using a VM 
would give you a way forward -- maybe doing something like:

Running either vim and gdb or the screen locker (that would require a VM with 
X capability, which exists, iiuc) in a VM, and then displaying both on the 
same screen, with, for example, the screen locker in a separate window.  Hmm, 
I guess I'm not sure that could be done.

Maybe someone else has some suggestions along this line, or some other line.

I guess another thought (maybe somebody mentioned it?) would be to have two 
separate computers, each with its own monitor and keyboard (or shared with a 
KVM switch), run the screen locker in one computer, and ssh from the other 
computer to access vim and gdb on the machine running the screen locker.