Arch Linux

tntcoda

Member

Registered: 2007-07-24

Posts: 115

Multiple X Sessions

Hi,

Could someone please tell me how to get multiple X sessions running, in seperate virtual terminals with different users?

Basically i have kde running on term 7, and i would like to run another instance of kde on term 6 under a different user.

Is this possible? I have tried running startx -- :1 on the new terminal but it doesnt work, no specific errors but the nvidia driver screen loads up fine, then it drops back to a prompt saying waiting for x server to shutdown and someting about the free font path.

Im using 2 monitors on an Nvidia 8800GTX.

Thanks for any help,

Jack

patogen

Member

Registered: 2008-05-11

Posts: 86

Re: Multiple X Sessions

xinit is a way to go, for instance:

xinit /opt/kde/bin/startkde -- :1

Will start kde on tty8. I don't know how to run it on tty6, I think you need to change the default inittab to no use tty6 then. This part of /etc/inittab:

c1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/1 linux
c2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/2 linux
c3:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/3 linux
c4:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/4 linux
c5:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/5 linux
c6:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/6 linux

Gives us that tty1-6 is used for terminals and everything else, 7-12 can be used for X servers. So you probably want to change that part of inittab to:

c1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/1 linux
c2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/2 linux
c3:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/3 linux
c4:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/4 linux
c5:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/5 linux
#c6:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 vc/6 linux

Thus tty6 will be the default to run X on and after that you can issue xinit as previously stated to get what you want, i.e another X server on tty7.

---

We met up with the aliens and guess what? They have no word for fluffy!

tntcoda

Member

Registered: 2007-07-24

Posts: 115

Re: Multiple X Sessions

Thanks that works fine, i was hoping it would be possible to use a custom xorg file for the new session though? I basically want the new session to use 1 monitor rather than 2.

Dont suppose you can point me in the right direction on how to do this with xinit? Can i write a new xorg.conf and supply it as an argument to xinit somehow?

signor_rossi

Member

Registered: 2007-08-24

Posts: 257

Re: Multiple X Sessions

This can be done with qingy. You get a nice graphical login screen (it uses the framebuffer, not X) for each virtual terminal you want (even with different background pic) and can use different xorg configs per virtual terminal. Have a look at the wiki on how to install and a look at the config file that gets installed in /etc/qingy on how to achieve different xorg configs. Also follow the steps you get when you install it.

Bye, signorRossi.

tntcoda

Member

Registered: 2007-07-24

Posts: 115

Re: Multiple X Sessions

brilliant thanks alot.