[systemd-devel] Rethinking getty and fast user switching

[Lennart Poettering]

On Mon, 20.02.12 10:57, Dax Kelson (dkelson at gurulabs.com) wrote:

> 
> On Mon, 2012-02-20 at 17:54 +0100, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> 
> > What is currently implemented is more like this:
> > 
> > 1. On systems with graphical login: tty1 is always the DM
> > 
> > 2. On systems without graphical login: tty1 is always a getty
> 
> Is this the case even for the first boot after install? I've seen the DM
> was on tty2 instead. I'd like the "first boot after install" to be
> consistent with all other boots.

This sounds like a bug.

I think gdm misses a configuration option to enforce that it always
takes posession of a certain tty device. Without that we might sometimes
have a race here where the systemd status printing stuff might open
/dev/tty1 for a short moment to print a message (i.e. the green [ OK ]
messages), and X11 at the very same time is started and ends up thinking
that /dev/tty1 is already taken.

> In the general case, I'd strongly prefer a setup that was consistent and
> deterministic as far as accessing X.
> 
> If I walk up to a box where someone has switched to a text console, I
> don't want to play the "search for the X" game. I teach Linux classes in
> rooms full of students and this is a constant annoyance compared to the
> old deterministic days.

Yes, I fully agree with this.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.