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Bug#423014: marked as done (console's last three lines become inaccessible once xdm start up)

Your message dated Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:37:27 +0100
with message-id <4730B467.9000708@ens-lyon.org>
and subject line Bug#423014: console's last three lines become inaccessible once xdm start up
has caused the attached Bug report to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what I am
talking about this indicates a serious mail system misconfiguration
somewhere.  Please contact me immediately.)

Debian bug tracking system administrator
(administrator, Debian Bugs database)
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: xdm
Version: 1:1.1.4-3
Severity: critical
Tags: security
Justification: breaks unrelated software


When I start up xdm, the console starts to imagine that there are
three more lines available than actually exist.  The console actually
has 25 lines; but the console ttys think it has 28 lines.  The resize
command reports LINES=28.  Even if I export LINES=25 and then fire up
screen, my shell within screen has LINES=28.

This means that I can't see the last three lines of output, once
output gets to the bottom of the screen; it means that the emacs
minibuffer and the aptitude dialog area are invisible; these don't
even scroll into view after it's too late.  This makes both emacs and
aptitude almost impossible to use (hence: breaks unrelated software)
and makes it almost impossible for root to do anything (hence:
critical) if I follow the cautious policy of never letting root do
anything in a window under X.  The console becomes extremely difficult
(and dangerous - see below) to use.

It means that, when dpkg is installing a package, I'm apt to be asked
some question I can't see and given a prompt I can't see and left
waiting for the program to do something, so I end up hitting return
and getting whatever the default was for the question I never saw
being asked (on account of this last, I have added "security" as a
tag); after that, dpkg begins producing more output and the entire
dialog in which I have just played my blind part scrolls into view.
Obviously, dpkg is not the only software (reportbug springs to mind)
that relies on me to respond to prompts, after producing enough output
that it's apt to be in the last three lines of the screen; nor is dpkg
the only one for which random answers to unseen prompts may result in
security-relevant disasters.

The problem is *not* that the screen is mis-sized; if I shrink
vertical on the screen, I still don't see the missing lines, though
the lines I do see now fit into a smaller vertical span on my screen.
In any case, if I suppress xdm's start-up (by adding an early exit 0
to /etc/init.d/xdm) I see normal console behaviour.  It would not,
however, surprise me if the problem is really with something else (xdm
is merely triggering it); there may be some package doing something
clever with the frame-buffer (bug I don't have a logo visible on
screen).  The problem *may* (but I'd be surprised) be related to the
fact that my xorg.conf Display sections say
	Modes	"1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480" "1600x1200"
with the highest-resolution last (when I put it first, xdm failed to
start up, albeit taking three tries at it before giving up; moving it
to the end lets xdm start, after which Ctrl+Alt+keypad(-) suffices to
get me to the highest resolution; leaving it on the default doesn't
help the console, though).

About three months ago, I saw this same problem, tried to find its
cause, gave up and then was surprised, upon running the euro-test
script (which failed) to find the problem had gone away.  Today I
moved desks, so re-booted (for the first time since the power outage
three months ago - I love stable software ;-); and euro-test now
passes, without fixing this problem.  The fact that euro-test used to
be able to fix it does imply that there must be some way to work
around the problem (I'd be delighted if anyone can identify what; I've
been carefully through euro-test without finding what it did that
solved the problem).  I tried /etc/init.d/console-screen.sh, invoked
the same way euro-test was doing so three months ago, but that wasn't
what was solving the problem.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-4-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.ISO-8859-15, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.ISO-8859-15 (charmap=ISO-8859-15)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages xdm depends on:
ii  cpp                         4:4.1.1-15   The GNU C preprocessor (cpp)
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]       1.5.13       Debian configuration management sy
ii  libc6                       2.3.6.ds1-13 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libice6                     1:1.0.3-2    X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libpam0g                    0.79-4       Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libselinux1                 1.32-3       SELinux shared libraries
ii  libsm6                      1:1.0.2-2    X11 Session Management library
ii  libx11-6                    2:1.0.3-7    X11 client-side library
ii  libxau6                     1:1.0.1-2    X11 authorisation library
ii  libxaw7                     1:1.0.2-4    X11 Athena Widget library
ii  libxdmcp6                   1:1.0.2-2    X11 Display Manager Control Protoc
ii  libxext6                    1:1.0.1-2    X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxinerama1                1:1.0.1-4.1  X11 Xinerama extension library
ii  libxmu6                     1:1.0.2-2    X11 miscellaneous utility library
ii  libxpm4                     1:3.5.5-2    X11 pixmap library
ii  libxt6                      1:1.0.5-2    X11 toolkit intrinsics library
ii  x11-common                  1:7.1.0-18   X Window System (X.Org) infrastruc
ii  xbase-clients               1:7.1.ds1-2  miscellaneous X clients

xdm recommends no packages.

-- debconf information:
* shared/default-x-display-manager: xdm
  xdm/stop_running_server_with_children: false
  xdm/daemon_name: /usr/bin/X11/xdm

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
Edward Welbourne wrote:
>> Will you have a chance to try the old CRT again?
>>     
> No - it's been junked (see below for why), that's why I replaced it.
> This might justify closing the bug as "hardware fault".
>
>   
>> Are you sure the bug disappeared because you switched the display 
>> and not because of an upgrade at the same time?
>>     
>
> The bug persisted through an upgrade shortly before, which broke X
> support for the old CRT; and we (a sysadmin and I) were unable to work
> out what was the matter with it; but a replacement display workd fine,
> so we blamed the CRT.  However, in investigating that, we were
> routinely using the console, which *was* missing its bottom three
> lines.
>
> So I don't believe the disappearance was due to the software upgrade.
>   

Thanks for the followup. I am closing this bug for now then.

If anybody ever reproduces, feel free to reopen.

Brice

--- End Message ---
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