Who around here knows what is SUPPOSED to happen when alt-ctrl-f? is pressed while in X windows?

I know if runlevel 3 is used, you can have 6 different ttys.

But what about runlevel 4?

My computer boots into kdm, where I can decide which user to be. If I hit alt-ctrl-(f2-f5), I get nothing, If I hit alt-ctrl-f6 I get a normal non-x-window-getty, and if I go back into alr-ctrl-f1, I don't get what I was originally working on, it just goes down to the screen where it listed everything that happened while booting.

So are these function keys supposed to do something other than crash x-windows?

BTW, I can switch screens via alt-f1 alt-f2 alt-f3 . . .

By default in Slackware only console 6 is enabled in runlevel 4 (GUI run level). This is configurable - have a look in /etc/inittab. Mine has this:
Just add in runlevel 4 to the ones that you want to have available.

Is that only for text consoles like console 6?

Open up /etc/inittab as root and find this section:and change it to this:Basically you're adding a 4 to the second field of those lines. You'd want them all to be 12345.

Now I have no idea why it crashes X... it shouldn't. The virtual terminals, consoles, whatever you want to call them are always there. There's some program (supplement to init) that almost all distributions come with that sets that up. I'm also assuming that if it's not there that problems will arise.

The ctrl+alt+f1 terminal is all the bootup stuff. Logically, when init starts it will open up and work in the first terminal. All that stuff is there because the console itself is not "respawned." It would be there anyway, but a new terminal does open... it doesn't have to because it's running now in c7.

When you change those things in inittab, the 1235 to 12345, you're telling init that the first 5 consoles should respawn with an agetty once the init process has stopped in all the runlevels, not just 1, 2, 3 and 5. I did this on my computers and it works perfectly.

There's some other cool and basic stuff that you can learn from Slackware's inittab. You can see why kdm runs in ctrl+alt+F7, etc. etc.

Happy Slacking!

EDIT: I type too slowly... The answer has been given. But yes, it's just those text consoles like F6.

I had no idea that KDM spawned in F7! Learn something new I did.

Do you know if there is a way to have KDM spawn into more slots than just F7? Like having multiple X logins on the same machine?

BTW, I had actually thought it killed the Xserver because I couldn't back to it. I guess now that I know about tty7, I guess it didn't kill it after all.

I'm not sure about init spawning more than one X server or more than one kdm. I'm sure it can be done, though.

You can, however, create a second X server manually by going into one of the virtual terminals, logging in as the user you want logged into X and doThis, of course, will log you into the default window manager or environment and will be located at F8.

For instance, I use KDE by default. I'll open up a Konsole and type startx -- :1 and the F8 has a fresh KDE so there are two. I did this for a little while so I could run a game that ate my whole screen. That way I could tie up the second x server with my game and then still have my regular setup for internet and whatever. When I was done with the game I would just exit out and have my one x server. The only problem is that I was running two KDE's so I pretty much only had enough memory for the game and a firefox and that was about it. So before I ran that startx command I ran "xwmconfig" first and chose the simplest one I could find... I think it was Tab WM. Then I had to make sure when I was done to run xwmconfig again and change it back. Needless to say I broke my game so I don't have any need to do it anymore.

Do a little research on this and I'm sure you'll find something that'll put my method to shame...

EDIT: Just so you know... I broke the game doing something completely different... not this... I've also used this to test out different window managers while still having something familiar running without having to keep restarting X.

very much thanks.

I searched around the configuration options for kdm in /opt/kde/share/config/kdmrc.

I changed this option, which controls which Xservers kdm appears in:

StaticServers=:0

to

StaticServers=:0,:1

and

ReserveServers=:1,:2,:3

to

ReserveServers=:2,:3,:4

and magically I have two logins, one at console 7 and one at console 8.

So, it wasn't too difficult. Of course, if I just wanted to use it for a few minutes, I shouldn't need to go to the trouble, but if it is going to be of constant usage, then it was a gem of a configuration option to find.

Thanks for your help and direction.

Perhaps the following might help:

Understanding X Session Alt-Fn Keyboard Assignments
Configuring Slackware for a GUI Startup---Part I
Configuring Slackware for a GUI Startup---Part II