X server restart after switching virtual consoles
 

Hi,

I just installed Redhat 8.0 on a new machine and everything seems to be working except the following:

If I log in using the graphical login screen and then switch to another virtual console (Ctrl-Alt-F1), briefly after switching, the screen goes black and the X server appears to restart. I am left with the graphical login screen again, and my previous X session is gone.

If I am not logged in when I switch virtual consoles, everything works normally.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the video, but I am using the i845 driver downloaded from intel.com.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

When you hit CTRL+ALT+F1, you're going to see the "behind the scenes" starting of X. To get back to X from the command line, just hit ALT+F7.

F1-F6 are your virtual terminals. F7 and up would be your X sessions. It is possible to have multiple X sessions running at once, but I can't remember how it's done. There's a thread here about that though somewhere. Anyway, it sounds like all you need to do is hit your ALT+F7 to get back to where you were.

When you're not logged in, your X hasn't "officially" started. You're most likely under the spell of gdm or kdm at the GUI "login screen". So when you hit CTRL+ALT+F7, and you type startx, it will start your X session. However, if you've already logged into X then go to virtual terminal 1 and type startx, you'll get an error saying that you've already got a session open--at this point, ALT+F7 and you should be back in X. Let me know if this works out for you. :D

Thanks for your reply. Perhaps I need to be a little clearer about what the problem is. Here is the typical scenario:

1) Boot up and wait for the graphical login screen (gdm) to appear.

2) Enter user name and password to log in.

3) Do some stuff in X -- open windows, etc.

4) Hit Ctnl-Alt-F1.

At this point, without me doing anything, the following happens:

1) A regular text login screen appears (vitrual console 1)
2) About 1 second passes
3) The screen goes black, and the familiar 'X' cursor appears.
4) The gdm graphical login screen comes up.

At this point, my previous X session with all my windows is gone. The only X virtual console is F7. There aren't any other X servers running on F8 or higher.

It sounds as though your runlevel is set to 3 for graphical boot. When you open a virtual terminal, I think it's automatically trying to go to runlevel 3 again. It errors because X is already running, and it kills the running X as well. The only solution I can think of is to change your run level in /etc/inittab to 5 instead of 3 so you'll have to boot to command line then startx. Also, have you tried to go to virtual terminal 2 (CTRL+ALT+F2)? Maybe it won't do the same thing, but I'm not too sure. Either way, it's a weird problem. Hopefully this helps.:D