Mulitple X sessions on RH 6.1

Jeffrey Wong jmwong at math.ed.hawaii.edu
Tue Feb 6 00:48:08 PST 2001


First, how to have multiple X sessions

You can have multiple X sessions running at either run level.  For the
first X session use startx by itself.  This will give you an X session
named :0.  The next X session should be started with 'startx -- :1'.
Don't forget the double dash in there!  Basically, there can only be one X
session with any given name, so each additional X session needs to have
another name (and all X session names have to be :<number>).  If you want
the shell to be for another user, you'll have to either su to the other
user or log in as the other user before using startx, as the X session
will be for whichever user runs it.

2nd, how to switch from an X session to another console screen.

X will remap the keyboard for its own uses and thats why the normal ALT-F#
doesn't work from X.  Instead X maps the switch console screen commands to
CTRL-ALT-F#.  So all you have to do is hold down CTRL when you switch
screens out of X.  If your using the default setup for RedHat, and I think
all the other distro's are the same here, you have 6 console screens
(F1-F6).  X will bind its display to the first avail console screen so it
usually has F7 for the first, then F8 for the second, etc.

3rd, how to send console text to VT12.

This is a tough one, as I havn't done this in a long time.  To redirect
messages to a console screen just redirect output to tty# where # is the
number of the console screen.  So if you want to say hi to F12 you would
do something like 'echo hi > /dev/tty12'.  Note that in order for this to
work, whoever is doing this needs to have write permission to /dev/tty12.
Now what is it you want to redirect there?  If you want the all the
messages that X spits out as its running then I think this might work
'startx -- > /dev/tty12 2>&1'.  Hmm, I just tried it and it works under
bash but not <t>csh.  Now that I think about it, it makes sense, as they
use slightly differnt redirection commands.  Well, I'll leave it as an
exercise for the reader to figure out the right commands for <t>csh.  It's
late and need some sleep.

Jeff Wong

Wow, I don't think I've written this much on this list in a long time.
I'll have to see about cutting back :)


On Mon, 5 Feb 2001, Ben Beeson wrote:

> Aloha all,
>
>     I have a desire to run multiple X sessions on one of my Linux
> boxes.  I remember seeing somewhere a tip on how to accomplish this
> trick, but I can't find it now.  If anyone knows how to do this, I would
> appreciate some advice.   What I'd like to do is login on VT7 from XDM,
> start a separate session on say VT8 for another user, and also send the
> contents of the console to VT12 so they are always available.
>
>     I seem to remember that one of the requirements to do this was to
> login from X, as opposed to logging in from a console and then starting
> X later via startx.  My box now boots to init 5 which should take care
> of part of the request, but I note now that changing VT as I used to do
> when I booted init 3 doesn't seem to work anymore.   Why is this so????
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Ben
>
>
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