can I start multiple x sessions
 

hi all,
My system starts up in runlevel 5.
I have the x session in virtual console F7.
I have seen on the net that I could go to any of the consoles - say F1 and
then start another x sesssion with this command :
startx -- :1
This should according to the tuxfiles site, start a session on terminal F8.
But in my case that doesnot happen.
Lot of output goes by but nothing happens in the end. Says...
Waiting for X Server to shut down

I am running Red Hat 2.6.9-5 kernel.
thanks
nishith

I'm not utterly sure, but this depends probably on your specific startx script. They seem to be not on all distributions to be the same, therefore, you might just copy yours to startx1 or something like this and change all setting from DISPLAY :0 to DISPLAY :1 and just call it like you call startx.

And yes, you can start two sessions, but I don't know if one could somewhere prevent such a thing by configuration.

Yes, it works definetely that way; I've just tried (on my Slackware 12) and called "startx -- :1" and had a new X session running on F8. Switching between the two sessions is with Ctrl-Alt-F<num>; switching from console as usal with Alt-F<num>.

As far as I can tell the method you used should work. At least it works for me. However, for me, there was a slight twist. I don't know if it is relevant to your problem, but anyway: on my system (debian etch), I can be logged in as normal in one session and then I can do a ctrl+alt+f1 and get to a text console and log in as some other user and then do e.g. and it starts up a new X windows session. Oddly, it is available at ctrl+alt+f2, and I would have thought that it should have been at ctrl+alt+f8. I also would have thought that ctrl+alt+f3 (or f4, f5, f6) would be text consoles, but in fact they are blank. Not sure why that is.

Interesting.

My new session was put properly after the first already started (on tty 7) one. I started from tty 3 or something like that.

My first 6 ttys are declared as text console ttys in my /etc/inittab.

All as expected.

sorry guys,
I am still lost ! I did a bit of reading and got some more confused :)
Actually I am being given a graphical login at the end of the boot sequence so I guess it is either gdm or xdm which is doing that.
Now I find both of these in the /etc/X11/ dir and confusingly enough I donot find the .Xsession file in gdm sub dir. There is no .xsession file in home dir too ?!?
Now I think I am running gdm becoz when I had a problem with exporting my display somebody helped me by telling I had to fix the gdm.conf file and I did that to find the problem gone.
Could you refer me to some resource which may help me understand this X stuff better ? And ofcourse any input from you all will be welcome . Thanks
nishith