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

[Wolfgang Bornath]

2011/12/18 Colin Guthrie <mageia at colin.guthr.ie>:
> '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.
>

What happens in this new scheme if graphical server fails - this is
happening more often than you think - this is not clear to me yet. If
the x server crashes and the default is starting a DM and graphical
login, what will happen then?

What happens if a user wants to boot into run level 3? He will get a
text prompt because neither x nor any DM has started yet - where does
he land, on VT7?

What happens when using SysReq keys?

About displaying a graphical login - when I press Ctrl-Alt-Fn I do
this to go to a text console, not to yet another x screen and I expect
a prompt, not yet another graphical login.

-- 
wobo