Arch Linux

Rollinco

Member

Registered: 2008-02-10

Posts: 4

TTY login showing before GDM

I have noticed that if I watch the boot sequence I see the TTY login prompt before GDM loads. Is this normal or is there a way to stop the TTY login prompt from showing up??:/

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bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: TTY login showing before GDM

It's normal. It's because it takes a bit of time for X to load, and while it does, you just see the usual vc/1 console.
By default, vc/1-vc/6 have the text-mode login prompts running on them (getty), and X/gdm runs on vc/7. You should be able to switch between consoles by Ctrl+Alt+Fn, n being a number between 1 and 7.

EDIT: There's a way to stop it of course (by editing /etc/inittab), but I would *not* recommend doing it. You'll see that it's often handy to have a way to log in in the console, when X screws up.

Last edited by bender02 (2008-02-29 02:28:25)

mintcoffee

Member

From: Waterloo, ON

Registered: 2007-10-05

Posts: 120

Website

Re: TTY login showing before GDM

If you don't prefix gdm / kdm with @, which makes it run in the background, then you won't see the console until your login screen is shown (I think).

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nDray

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2007-01-21

Posts: 143

Website

Re: TTY login showing before GDM

use inittab method. It may not solve your problem, but it's the way to do things.... Someone should remove the daemons way off doing it from the wiki...

kendosperling

Member

From: Dresden

Registered: 2007-08-28

Posts: 49

Re: TTY login showing before GDM

why do you think one schould not use the daemon way?

JaQoB

Member

Registered: 2007-04-04

Posts: 60

Re: TTY login showing before GDM

I have the same "problem", and i am not sure, but i actually think kdm start faster as a backgrounded deamon, then with the inittab way.

carlocci

Member

From: Padova - Italy

Registered: 2008-02-12

Posts: 368

Re: TTY login showing before GDM

why do you think one schould not use the daemon way?

Let's say you install the brand new ati catalyst video driver which makes your kernel to panic.
How would you fix this without console access?
And if you have console access, how would you tell your computer not to run X?
Daemons are runned for runlevels 2345, so your only choice would be entering single user mode and work with a single console, or edit rc.conf removing Xdm and going back to multilevel (having an open browser/manpage to support you as you edit is useful).

If you use inittab for starting X, you can choose at boot whether to start X, multiuser login, single user, whatever else configuration scripts you want to run.
And the runlevel system is made exactly for that. Use it!

Last edited by carlocci (2008-02-29 21:34:30)

tigrmesh

IRC Op

From: Florida, US

Registered: 2007-12-11

Posts: 794

Re: TTY login showing before GDM

I have noticed that if I watch the boot sequence I see the TTY login prompt before GDM loads.

This makes sense; if you think about it, gdm is just a graphical front for the login prompt.

is there a way to stop the TTY login prompt from showing up??:/

One way is to use a boot splash.  I used to use splashy.  There's a wiki page for it.  I know there are others as well.  Search the forums and the wiki for splash. 

I decided I preferred the boot messages to the splash screen...