[Mageia-dev] ANN: X11 now starts on tty1

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Maarten Vanraes at 18/12/11 11:46 did gyre and gimble:
> Op zondag 18 december 2011 11:54:17 schreef Colin Guthrie:
>> 'Twas brillig, and Anssi Hannula at 18/12/11 10:32 did gyre and gimble:
>>> For the record, attached are three alternative [1] untested
>>> proof-of-concept patches that make kernel start on vt7.
>>
>> Personally I'm not a fan of sticking to vt7. As I said in an earlier
>> thread, if the primary use case of the machine is graphical, then why
>> start at 7? It's an arbitrary choice that fitted in with other uses when
>> it was first introduced, but these days it's pretty backwards when
>> considered on it's own. The only reason to preserve it is out of habit
>> and I think that this is (generally speaking) the worst possible premise
>> to base decisions on. I mean, if we want to let people use fast user
>> switching easily they first have to learn first about vt switch command
>> ctrl+alt+Fn. Then they have to learn that the first login is on 7 and
>> the subsequent ones are on 8 etc. This doesn't make sense...
>>
>> What *should* happen is that the first one is 1.. the second one is 2 etc.
>>
>> When I'm in gnome, and I switch to tty2 for the first time, rather than
>> getty appearing wouldn't it be better if the gdm prompt appeared for a
>> second graphical login?
>>
>> I'm not suggesting that we ditch text logins completely, but I'm just
>> saying that we should try and make things generally smoother if they
>> user has already opted for a graphical system.
>>
>> Switching to e.g. 7 or 8 should maybe default to providing a text login
>> and gdm should maybe present a "give me a text login" option in which
>> case that X server quits and getty replaces it.
>>
>> Anything unused should timeout and quit (e.g. a getty on tty2 unused
>> should exit and wait and be re-activated as appropriate later.
>>
>> All these things are possible (maybe not without upstream support, but I
>> can ask Ray about the general plans here from a gdm perspective).
>>
>>
>> Just for reference this is how the seat extender USB things work. Little
>> thin clients that you plug into USB that give you a keyboard mouse and
>> display. When you plug it in for the first time, it registers a new seat
>> and then gives you a gdm login prompt. I don't think mutli user should
>> be much different from multi-seat in this regard.
>>
>>> BTW, I know fedora uses vt1 for X, but what about other distros, e.g.
>>> Ubuntu/Debian?
>>
>> I don't think they default to it but plenty people try to change it to
>> that according to Google.
>>
>>
>> Col
> 
> 
> theoretically, i'd be in favor of on-demand vt allocation, be it graphical or 
> textbased.
> 
> i'd be ok with a session starting when going to other vt (default session, be 
> it a dm or a textbased login.) 

Yup, this is generally what I'd propose.

> however, the dm should allow to fall back to 
> textbased, but there we run into a problem:
> 
> what if X is failing, you can't go back to text-login, so that's a nono
> 
> perhaps we could document that we'd preallocate F12 or something for text-
> based emergency, but then noone would know...

Yeah, as above, I was suggesting that e.g. 7&8 were always text logins.

> I donno, if we don't have textbased by default, then surely vt1 has to be 
> forcably text-based...

> new X sessions are started from the old session, so i vote that CTRL+ALT+FX 
> spawns a text-based login.

They can be, but I'd vote that this should change. e.g. if you have a
setup where you "typically" have two users logged in and session 1 is
always "Dad" and session 2 is always "Mum", if Mum knows that she does
ctl+alt+F2 to switch to her session when she is logged in, however in
order to login, Dad has to already be logged in and either select the
Switch User option, or do so from a logged screen.

But say there has been a power cut and the machine is rebooted, Dad
hasn't logged in but Mum wants to use "her" session on VT2 because
that's what they are both used to.

If she presses ctl+alt+f2 when at the login prompt, all she sees is a
text login, this will be confusing to her. However if it spawns a new
graphical login, then she'll appreciate she's not logged in yet and log in.

So stand by my original suggestion that if you are running a graphical
target, Switching to a TTY to get a "login prompt" should show you a
graphical login prompt. If however you are only in the text level
(multi-user.target) then you should be given text logins.

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
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http://colin.guthr.ie/

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