How can I devote a screen to the console while using X...
 

I have a setup with three monitors running Fluxbox on Slackware 13.37. I use two of the screens for X using the nvidia driver. Is there a way to attach the 3rd monitor to a console outside of X for error messages? I am doing kernel development which could result in several "oops" crashes and I need to see that dump in the console.

-Tristan

Just open a Terminal Emulator window and run it full screen. However what you probably need to see is the errors that get generated on the console you launched startx from.

In that case you can see the error or warning log file for troubleshooting purpose at the following location:

/var/log/Xorg.?.log

In your full screen Terminal window use the tail command to view log file:

That said, I am not sure if the Xorg log file will give you everything you need. (In fact after looking at it, it appears to only have start-up messages) You may still need to flip to the console (Ctrl+Alt+F<x>) you launched startx from to see everything.

I would think there would be a way to see the information printing to the console you started X from in a Terminal window, but I could not find one. I did find a verbose option that may give you more info in the log file:

Actually I think I'm just going to modify the /etc/syslog.conf to log kern.* to specific vty. That should work.

I thought something like this would be possible, but just didn't know what was available.

If possible can you post what you did to get syslog.conf logging to a specific vty? I would like to know how its done! Thanks!

The console on a PC host host normally is, by default, connected to a non-X terminal. I think a more accurate way to look at the problem is to figure out how to limit X from using all of the monitors, and only create an X server on two of them as specified by you.
Sorry I cannot actually guide you on that part, but you can normally get to the text-mode console from X with 'Ctrl-Alt-F1' (and Ctrl-Alt-F7, to get back to X).
An alternative solution might be to use a serial port as the console by specifying that on the kernel commandline. Then, attach a serial terminal or terminal emulator to the serial port as your console connection.
--- rod.