Arch Linux

FrozenFox

Member

From: College Station, TX

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 422

Website

[SOLVED?] Virtual terminal 8 always busy doing nothing?

Hai.

I use xlaunch (in AUR) to launch games and such in another x session. It has worked fine launching apps and games on terminal 8 (ctrl+alt+f8.. correct me if i have the terminal number wrong) for some time, but then all of the sudden ceased to function correctly. It happened right around the time i upgraded the kernel to 2.6.27, and I can't seem to figure out how to fix it. With my old (previously working, unchanged) xlaunch script OR the one in aur (ie, i've eliminated xlaunch as the issue pretty much) that did work at the same time, either way, it loads on terminal 9 instead of 8. This is a very minor problem, but it gets really annoying, since I'm used to switching to 8 and not skipping a key distance. How might I figure out what's eating terminal 8 or fix it? The only place I know of with a trace to this is inittab, which is only for the first 6 terminals.

Thanks all

Last edited by FrozenFox (2008-10-23 04:01:13)

Procyon

Member

Registered: 2008-05-07

Posts: 1,819

Re: [SOLVED?] Virtual terminal 8 always busy doing nothing?

That sounds odd.

Is there a dead X or something? pgrep Xorg

Try making a new X yourself: Xorg :1 & (sleep 4; DISPLAY=:1 xterm) &

If that doesn't give answers, comment out c3 to c6 in your inittab, reboot, see what the result is, (can you bind X to vc/3 and 4?), restore the inittab, reboot.

FrozenFox

Member

From: College Station, TX

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 422

Website

Re: [SOLVED?] Virtual terminal 8 always busy doing nothing?

fox@NOWAI ~/ $ sudo pgrep Xorg
26198

Making a new X worked okay, but still put it on tty9. I just noticed that tty8 does not have the blinking underscore that the other tty's do, so i'm not sure what is screwing with it.

EDIT: Just tried it. I could start X, and it would put it on vc/3 just fine when i killed 3-6 in inittab. So apparently whatever is eating the terminal is specifically eating 8, not the 'next' one available. o.O

I also realized that I think xorg-server might have been updated at the same time as the kernel, but I'm not sure. Has xorg-server been updated in the repos within the last two weeks? I certainly started having this issue only within the last week or so, likely the last few days, and I update pretty often, once every few days, so it mustve been something within that frame. I've done no other major system workings.

EDIT2: Nvm.. god i love arch. it was so easy to find that information.. it seems the last time it was updated in Extra (i dont use Testing) was 9/13. So definitely wasn't an update to xorg-server that caused the problem..... I can't think of anything possible that could be eating it. The only other thing I've really installed is pulseaudio, and nothing else but updates, the only big one being the kernel that i noticed.

Out of curiosity, I'm trying to downgrade to the other kernel now.

Last edited by FrozenFox (2008-10-21 14:06:11)

Procyon

Member

Registered: 2008-05-07

Posts: 1,819

Re: [SOLVED?] Virtual terminal 8 always busy doing nothing?

it would put it on vc/3 just fine when i killed 3-6 in inittab

What if you ran two Xorgs though, did it run fine on vc/3 and vc/4?

FrozenFox

Member

From: College Station, TX

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 422

Website

Re: [SOLVED?] Virtual terminal 8 always busy doing nothing?

Ah, I misunderstood your instructions. I will try that.

Reverting to the old kernel and (out of curiosity) removing pulse didnt do anything (lol, I didnt expect it to, but you never know! I did use my own pkgbuild). Still a dead vc/8. x_x Will edit this post as soon as I'm done re-trying the inittab stuffs.

EDIT: Yes, I tested 2 xorgs running, and both ran fine on vc/3 and vc/4.

I'm even more baffled than before. There were now officially no updates that I can think of that could've possibly screwed up tty8 somehow..

EDIT2: Out of sheer curiosity, I tried running sudo /sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/8 linux and it worked just fine, showing the login prompt on vc/8 whereas before it wouldn't even show the blinking underscore like vc/9 and on do. Wth?

Last edited by FrozenFox (2008-10-21 15:06:51)

FrozenFox

Member

From: College Station, TX

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 422

Website

Re: [SOLVED?] Virtual terminal 8 always busy doing nothing?

.......................................
??????????????????????????????????

I'm so bloody confused. I've rebooted about 10 times doing different things and the problem persisted. Now I ran a game in wine with xlaunch and all of the sudden vc/8 is working as it is supposed to, with all games, even the ones that a few hours ago were opening up in vc/9....

okay then..

I'll post back if it reverts I guess?

FrozenFox

Member

From: College Station, TX

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 422

Website

Re: [SOLVED?] Virtual terminal 8 always busy doing nothing?

-_-

Upon reboot, vc/8 is screwed up again. Ugh. This time though, it's not just a blank screen. It shows some boot-up sequence stuff. I see:

Starting Hardware Abstraction Layer [ BUSY ]
[FAIL]
Starting portmap [ DONE ]
Starting file alteration monitor [ DONE ]
Starting KDE Desktop Manager [ DONE ]
Starting httpd [ BKGRD ]
Starting mysqld [ BKGRD ]

Note that my system boots up into kde fine, and works as expected.. I'm not sure if that HAL message has anything to do with my trouble, but I've not had any problems in that respect..

Last edited by FrozenFox (2008-10-22 03:30:38)

FrozenFox

Member

From: College Station, TX

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 422

Website

Re: [SOLVED?] Virtual terminal 8 always busy doing nothing?

I believe this gave the clue that saved the day. I removed HAL and pulseaudio from the DAEMONS list (Hal still loaded when I !'ed it, so i figured something must've been loading it anyway.. apparently it was pulseaudio o.O or more coincidence presents itself to haunt me on this coincidence-loaded bug hunt. i dont know, but hal didnt load anymore). Now vc/8 is working correctly.

EDIT: Four reboots later with hal disabled (note earlier I tried removing pulse, no effect as expected, so it's hal) and vc/8 is still working correctly. Now then, to revert to an older hal which I don't seem to have in my pkg cache.

EDIT2: Officially confirmed. Reverting to an older hal (x.10, whereas current is x.11) and rebooting = working vc/8. Upgrading to new hal and rebooting = broken vc/8.

.. What's puzzling though is that with either one, hal will not start up. Just the newer version takes vc/8 down with it. I wonder how long hal has been broken from booting on my system and I didn't notice?

EDIT3: .. and /etc/rc.d/hal stop (then start) leaves hal with a 'FAIL' message. However, there are a lot of HALD processes running, and they appear to be running correctly...??? My messages.log shows this after mounting a drive via konqueror clicks with the new version. The old version does not show any drives at all, unsurprisingly, though hald is running in the processes list..

Oct 21 23:08:35 NOWAI hald: mounted /dev/sda1 on behalf of uid 1000

How can it 'FAIL' to start, 'FAIL' to be stopped, and yet still work somewhat properly with a new version and differently "somewhat properly" with an old version? xD

EDIT4: Out of curiosity, I tried updated to xorg-server in testing, which depended on the newer Hal. Wouldn't even load. Died before the nvidia screen, even with nvidia-beta in aur. I'm guessing an nvidia driver issue. So much for testing that to see if somehow it prevented hal's crash from eating the vc/8. hehe. oh well.

Time to bug report this to the hal devs I guess? I'm really not sure if it's a problem with the package or hal.

Last edited by FrozenFox (2008-10-22 04:36:07)