LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@topology.org>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:53:45 +0930

Re: linux X windows screen lock useless?

On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 09:20:27AM +0930, Mark Newton wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 09:07:25AM +0930, Alan Kennington wrote:
> 
>  > > The question you should be asking is, "Why do I have an X session *AND*
>  > > a console session, when the only thing I use the console session for is
>  > > to start my X server?"  Don't do this, use xdm.  That's what it's for,
>  > > that's what it has always been for, that's what you're supposed to use.
>  > 
>  > There's a teency-weency problem with this.
>  > It's a good idea if you always have the same monitor on each machine,
>  > but in my case, I often either remove the monitor or swap monitors.
>  > In that case, there's a danger of not being able to control
>  > my machine on boot-up. 
> 
> I don't follow -- Why is there a problem with that?
> 
> If you boot a machine up with an X configuration which doesn't work with
> the timings appropriate for whatever monitor you have plugged in, you
> hit CTRL-ALT-F1 and login on a console, frob the modelines, and 
> kill the X server (xdm will then restart it for you).
> 
>  > I've foudn that the options on xdm, gdm and kdm are often
>  > quite restrictive too. Like all "user friendly" systems,
>  > they make things easier if you want to do what's in the menus,
>  > but not if you're an individual.
> 
> There are no menus in xdm.  xdm's sole and only job is to manage your
> display for the purposes of session management.
> 
> It gives you a login window, with a username field and a password field
> and nothing else.  When you login it runs .xsession in your home directory
> (if it's executable), or a system .xsession.  So you can configure it as
> much or as little as you want.
[...]

Mark,

Obviously I need to study xdm. 
Yet another software-clump to study!
I can still see problems there though.
Like do I really want to configure a new monitor
when I change monitor?
E.g. I had one machine where the monitor was just not capable
of running the kdm or gdm or xdm login thing and therefore I
always wanted to run that machine in text only.
I've just got in the _habit_ now of setting up all
machines for console login plus startx.
It just saves me having to think about anything else.
At least I get a guaranteed minimum level of access.
If I get into the _habit_ of using these modern-fangled xdm 
things, then I'll have to study how to get rid of it when
I need to.
Having xdm in inittab obviously makes it more difficult to
get rid of than running out of startx.

On my latest machine (a Toshiba portégé 3020CT), I experimented
with xdm, gdm and kdm for start up for a few days, and finally
just dumped them all in favour of the getty console.
The reason in that case was that the mouse was so awful.
Sometimes even the mouse doesn't work at all or I don't have a mouse.
And sometimes I don't have the RAM required for using graphics.
The plain xdm does not give me the options to use gnome or afterstep
or kde or fvwm2 etc. That's why I prefer gdm or kdm to xdm.

The "sans mouse" problem can sometimes be solved by the
control-shift-numberlock trick. But my latest notebook PC
doesn't have the numberlock key!!

Anyway, I'll go off and study it now (rather than doing
productive work!), and write it up in a web page when I understand it.

Thanks, as always, for the help.
Cheers,
Alan Kennington. 

-- 
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