[systemd-devel] [HEADSUP] We no longer spawn 6 gettys by default

[Lennart Poettering]

Heya,

a small heads-up on one thing that I just added to git: we no longer
start 5 gettys on vt2-vt6 by default. Instead in multi-user mode we
start only one getty on tty1 resp. in graphical mode one dm on
tty1. Effectively this changes very little though: we now spawn
additional gettys as they are needed. i.e. if you change to vt5 with
Alt-F5 and there's nothing else running on it we will spawn a getty
automatically.

Net effect: we start less by default, but for the user little should
change. Except maybe that if you do fast user switching in GNOME your
sessions will end up on F1, F2, F3 now. 

You can also use this to spawn arbitrary other things on a VT. It's just a
matter where the autovt at .service symlink points to. It points to
getty at .service by default, but you can link something else to it
too. And you can even do additional instantiated symlinks, too, in case
you want to start a getty on Vt4 but something else on Vt5.

Currently systemd will do the autospawning of gettys only on the first 6
ttys, and this isn't configurable. Before we release this we will make
this configurable in a config file /etc/systemd/logind.conf.

Note that this is fully compatible with previous setups: if you have a
static symlink it will be honoured, and we will never spawn a getty with
this on a tty which is already used by an app.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.