After all those complex problems with sound, let me ask for some help on something that should be much easier to resolve. It should just be a matter of automating something I currently do manually. This refers to the same Debian unstable system I discussed in the sound card thread.
I've become attached to some console programs and had been running them in a sort of console window manager called "twin" on a second VT. Works nicely (if you can get the right vga mode to work with your video card) but there are some inconveniences--for example if you need to run some X app when you try opening an email attachment or something. The combination of those two problems led me to consider instead running a lightweight, console-like WM on that second VT. I decided on ion3, since I've had some experience with that.
I discovered through some web searching that setting this up to work "manually" was very easy under Debian. It was easy because Debian apparently does not use an .xinitrc file found in the user's home dir when starting up Xwindows on display :0 (hope I've said that at least somewhat correctly). However if you create an .xinitrc file in your home directory that points to a valid WM binary on your system, then start Xwindows on display :1 in a second VT, it will use that .xinitrc file and get the WM running on the second display. This can be either a second copy of the same WM or a different WM altogether. One can alternate between the two by use of the ctrl-alt-F7 and ctrl-alt-F8 keys. An example of the command line way of doing this is to press ctrl-alt-F2 to get to the second VT and a (login, then) command prompt. From the prompt, simply issue startx -- :1.
Works fine. The question I'm currently trying to resolve however, is getting the WM to start up automatically in the second VT. This should happen either after I log into the system (using xdm), or, short of that, automatically. I gather it can be done by editing inittab, though I'm not sure of the exact syntax. I suppose it might also be accomplished by editing/creating some xdm config file. A third way might involve tweaking startx. And this is what I'd like to ask advice on.
Finally, my question. Can anyone offer suggestions on ways of getting the second WM running on display :1 automatically? E.g., after I log in to xdm? Hope this will be as easy as it seems.
First, let's clear up a bit of terminology.
In your setup (stock Debian, no matter if Woody, Sarge, or Sid for this purpose), you have consoles running on VTs 1 to 6. You have xdm, then X itself after login, running on VT7 (as DISPLAY 0 - DISPLAY is an env variable that applies only to X sessions, not CLI consoles).
When you do a "startx" from VT2, it actually starts X (as DISPLAY 1) on the first available VT, which is 8, not 2. (If you switch back to VT2 after you run startx, you'll still see a console that presents that command, followed by its output to STDOUT and STDERR, and that you can kill the X session from with a CTRL-C.)
This is the standard way to start X from a console. If you want the console available, not tied up, detach the job ("startx &").
There are two basic ways to start X sessions (including a login manager like xdm or gdm) as part of init:
1. Via an entry in /etc/inittab . I think most mainline distros still do it this way (I know Slackwere did, using a different runlevel for X-based inits), but Debian does not.
2. Via an init file. This is how Debian does it, via /etc/init.d/xdm, plus a symlink fro /etc/rc2.d/ to it.
Debian's approach makes it hard to start 2 X (or xdm) sessions as part of init, because the script is designed around the xdm session it starts being unique. To stay with this aproach, you'd need to write a custom script, or perhaps add some lines to an rclocal script if you've made one (it's not part of standard Debian).
You *might* be better served by switching to (what I think of as) the Slackware approach, adding lines to /etc/inittab for consoles 7 and 8 that run xdm (or actual X logins), and removing the xdm script symlink from your default runlevel directory. If you want to take this approach, any Slackware user here should be able to give you a sample of what the inittab entry should look like ... I *think* is is just --
7:23:respawn:/usr/bin/X11/xdm
-- but I can't be certain because I don't have a working system here that uses this method of starting xdm, so I'm drawing on a memory that is years old.
PS - Did you give up on the sound card, or get it working? Or are you still in the process of trying?
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