runlevel 4 and virtual consoles

In /etc/inittab:

# Runlevel 4 used to be for an X window only system, until we discovered
# that it throws init into a loop that keeps your load avg at least 1 all
# the time. Thus, there is now one getty opened on tty6. Hopefully no one
# will notice. ;^)
# It might not be bad to have one text console anyway, in case something
# happens to X.

Well, I noticed, and I think it sucks. I would really like to get those other consoles (tty2 through tty5) open in runlevel 4. Does anyone know how to do it? I think Redhat does it in runlevel 5...

The way I start the graphical login
is somewhat unorthodox :)

default runlevel is 3, and I put
/opt/kde/bin/kdm
in my rc.local ... that gives me X on
F7, and F1 to F6 are terminals ...

Cheers,
Tink

but F2 through F5 are unavailable still?

F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6 :}

Cheers,
Tink

I read 'to' as 'and,' sorry.

And how would I start gnome that way?

By selecting it from the kdm pull-down
of available sessions? :)

Cheers,
Tink

I don't have KDE installed.

Oh well, everyone is entitled to mistakes ;)

do a
which gdm,
and put the full path to that into your
rc.local, then :}

/me doesn't have gnome installed ;D and actually only has KDE because of KMail and kdm :D

Cheers,
Tink

after a couple of reboots, it's working now without error (it errored the first two times with something about not a tty and where are you? but now it's working fine).

Cool ... :)

For future reference:

This is Linux, not a MickyMouse program...

init 1
init 3

that's all it takes to test it, no reboot required ;)

Cheers,
Tink

Great post. I was wondering about this for a while. Coming as a newbie from Red Hat (used for about a week), I was wondering how to simulate the same behavior. There is nothing like virtual console 1 to do all the cool stuff in console mode.

I had two things to add that I used your info to expand on, you could add a " &" onto the window manager call, so then you could login on console 1 if you wished (I couldn't before), and also if you'd rather not have the machine's boot information showing if physical access to machine is insecure (edit: I was wrong, this did wierd things when I tried it - adding "clear" after window manager call).

My only questions is does this configuration have the "load" problem mentioned in inittab?

Gol

I've encountered a problem with this setup. Ctrl + Alt + Backspace in X kills your X session, but another immediately starts, and the same for 'killall X', so you would have to switch to another runlevel to get rid of it. Any way around this?

Originally posted by stevenhasty I've encountered a problem with this setup. Ctrl + Alt + Backspace in X kills your X session, but another immediately starts, and the same for 'killall X', so you would have to switch to another runlevel to get rid of it. Any way around this?

Well, with the graphical login X get's
started (and "monitored") by the manager
(gdm, kdm, xdm, ...) and those restart the X
session ... to get rid of it, just kill the respective
manager :}
killall gdm

Cheers,
Tink

You can do it in runlevel 4 - change these lines in /etc/inittab:

c1:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty1 linux
c2:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty2 linux
c3:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty3 linux
c4:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty4 linux
c5:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty5 linux
c6:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty6 linux

To:

c1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty1 linux
c2:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty2 linux
c3:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty3 linux
c4:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty4 linux
c5:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty5 linux
c6:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty6 linux
c7:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty7 linux
c8:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty8 linux
c9:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty9 linux
c10:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty10 linux
c11:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty11 linux
c12:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty12 linux

This gives you F8 - F12

To allow root login on the extra consoles, add them to /etc/securetty

Cyclo--I just made the changes you suggested. I have yet to test in runlevel 4, but in runlevel 3, tty7 won't hold an X session if you switch out of it. shouldn't the c7 line be excluded?