Re: Bug#60891: xdm: Installs default tty7 line in Xservers -- break s system

[Sven LUTHER <luther@debian.org>]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 02:53:50AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 01:33:38AM -0600, gvl@phorce1.com wrote:
> > Note to the other two maintainers. Branden has closed the bug I
> > submitted. Based on the information he provided to me in his message I
> > feel that you also should close the bugs I submitted against gdm and
> > wdm. They should possibly be re-submitted at a lesser severity, but not
> > as critical. Please read my message below and determine for yourself.
> > 
> > Branden, I've just subscribed to debian-users and have yet to get any
> > messages after my confirmation. Please feel free to forward this if my
> > CC dosn't go through.
> > 
> > Hmm, Just re-read my bug-report message. Used too much cut/paste to post
> > the three reports. As stated in the final paragraph, I do NOT have xdm
> > installed right now, I have wdm. So I relied on the fact that all 3
> > packages defaulted to tty7 and that it is applied by the wdm.postinst
> > script...
> 
> Thank you for your calm reply to my very aggravated message.  I did in
> fact download the sources to the standard getty program that we use and
> started poking around for a solution.
> 
> I don't know if we'll be able to implement a final solution to this problem
> in time for the potato release (which will hopefully be soon), but here's
> what I think:
> 
> 1) Modifying /etc/inittab would be a bad idea because it's a very sensitive
>    thing; if a buggy package screws it up you may be very, very sorry.
> 2) I think a better approach would be to modify the X server and console
>    getty programs to use lock files on the console devices.  I'll want to
>    chat with some people I trust about file locking issues (say, MDA
>    maintainers :) ) before starting to hack on this.  I guess this solution
>    would go for programs like openvt as well.  It would ultimately become
>    Policy, but first I want to have a workable solution in place.
> 
> I did some experimenting this evening and I've found that no programs seem
> to have any respect for any others when it comes to pouncing on a VC.
> getty will step on X, X will step on getty, X will step on X, etc.
> 
> Permit me to *beseech* the other display manager maintainers to not modify
> the conffiles of another package, if that's what you're doing.  I expect
> [gkw]dm to have their own config directories under /etc/X11/ and not fool
> with mine.  I would do you the same courtesy, and besides, policy says you
> shouldn't.  :)

Just a stupid clueless idea, but what if we start the xserver from the
inittab, or at least have some line in the inittab saying that the
Xserver/gdm/whatever will use the vtxx, in the same way that init starts
getty's on his specific vt's ?

BTW, should we have a runlevel with X and a runlevel without X ? or do we
already have such a thing ?

Friendly,

Sven LUTHER