Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!1.eu.feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Unknown Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: Two X sessions on the same monitor Date: Mon, 25 May 2015 02:34:56 +0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 50 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Mon, 25 May 2015 02:34:56 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="1a438f8df4d71b9afc1ce6bc83bbca26"; logging-data="26227"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+Z8q7xkJKoRGdNFmJQpgpwTe8P2tstUuY=" User-Agent: Pan/0.133 (House of Butterflies) Cancel-Lock: sha1:ZtoriMxQokf4g7IakfWqyBjYAwI= Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:14866 On Sat, 21 Mar 2015 14:25:27 -0500, Robert Heller wrote: > At Sat, 21 Mar 2015 14:03:09 -0500 Zaphod Beeblebrox > wrote: > > >> On Sat, 21 Mar 2015 18:03:02 +0000, Clark Smith wrote: >> >> > I would be interested to launch two simultaneous, separate and >> > independent X sessions on the same monitor, keyboard and mouse. Only >> > one session would be active at a time, of course; but, ideally, I >> > should be able to switch from one session to the other with a simple >> > keyboard sequence, so that the other session becomes active. >> > >> > Is this at all possible? I understand that an X session takes up >> > a virtual terminal; in Linux, one can type ctl+alt+Fn* to move from >> > virtual terminal. Only one will be an X session, whereas the others >> > will just be dumb Linux sessions. I was just wondering if things >> > could be arranged so that another X session could be run, at the same >> > time, in one of those virtual terminals. >> >> In the old days, you'd do this with 'startx -- :1' in a spare VT, and >> it would do what was in ~/.xsession. So you'd need to customize that >> script to do different things depending on the value of $DISPLAY. You >> may still be able to do that with Slackware, but all the other dists >> have made the login/startup process more complicated, and put that >> stuff in whatever they use to replace xdm (there are so many xdm >> replacements these days). So your mileage will definitely vary >> depending on your distro. > > You can *still* do this if you login to one of the other consoles > (virtual TTYs). CentOS 5 and 6 still have the option of starting in > runlevel 3, where you can then start X11 the 'old fashioned' way. I > *think* it is possible with CentOS 7 or Fedora, but I don't know the > systemd magic to do that. Debian can also be set up to start without a > GUI login screen. > Yes, I can't remember the details but: my rPi [debian based] is set to boot into X [why did I do/allow that] and then just start playing the TTSound-files on the USB stik. My only control [also to navigate/mark the *.ogg] is the on/off power switch -- think time-division-multiplexing. > OTOH, it is possible to edit the config file(s) for xdm or its many > replacements to fire up multiple X11 sessions. > > > >>