Very Computer

Greetings,

Well, I've been fighting this Virtual Terminal quagmire for about two
weeks now and still no luck. At the point even you have any idea at all,
no matter how wild or insane it might seem to you, please, Please, don't
bogart it. Pass it along ;-)

The problem:

Everything was working fine until it became necessary for me to compile
a kernel. I have everything working in my new kernel except the virtual
terminals don't work once I log into X Windows (KDE). The virtual
terminals do work after boot up during the time you have the KDE login
prompt. I can hit CTRL-ALT and one of the F1 thru F6 function keys, and
get a console. Then I can hit CTRL-ALT-F7 to go back to the login
screen. But if I complete the login, and I'm in the KDE environment, I
cannot get a virtual terminal. I only get a blank screen. And then I
can't go back to X either unless I kill X from another machine to
respawn it.

I had been fiddling with the 2.4.2-2 kernel that came with my RedHat 7.1
CD-ROM most of this time. This evening I tried the new 2.4.14 kernel but
the VT's still wouldn't work. I wasn't able to get RedHat support to
help me so I am completely stuck at this time. The machine is useless to
me without VT's because I need them to switch between X sessions
connected to Work computers at the office.

I sure would appreciate hearing from you guys, thanks,
Rich Looke

There is a possibility they're there, you just cant see anything.  I have
one machine with a horrible ancient 15" (did I mention it's horrible?)
monitor and an ATI mach64 graphics card.  Since I last updated X (and
hence, the ATI driver) I can't switch between virtual terminals anymore,
after X has started - they're just either blank, or have a few stray lines
across the middle.  I don't worry about it too much, I'm using the machine
remotely for the most part, which is why it hasn't had a hardware upgrade.  
However, I can happily run two X sessions on it, and switch between them.

Quote:> I had been fiddling with the 2.4.2-2 kernel that came with my RedHat 7.1
> CD-ROM most of this time. This evening I tried the new 2.4.14 kernel but
> the VT's still wouldn't work. I wasn't able to get RedHat support to
> help me so I am completely stuck at this time. The machine is useless to
> me without VT's because I need them to switch between X sessions
> connected to Work computers at the office.

Have you actually tried with multiple X sessions? On mine, I can run two or
three X sessions and switch between them happily - what I can't do is go
between text mode and X.  I have theorised that if I ran the virtual
consoles in svgamode with a framebuffer, it might help out my card/monitor,
whichever it is that needs to sync, but I haven't tried it.

Have you checked it's actually KDE, or is it X related as is mine?  I get
the same behaviour if I just run twm, or indeed, no wm at all.  
--
Lauri Watts

Quote:> Everything was working fine until it became necessary for me to compile
> a kernel. I have everything working in my new kernel except the virtual
> terminals don't work once I log into X Windows (KDE). The virtual
> terminals do work after boot up during the time you have the KDE login
> prompt.

I may have a related problem. I use KDE on my ISDN gateway, the gateway
server itself only has a 12" monitor which does 640x480. I wanted to run KDE
over X-Windows. Runs fine by the way.

I didn't want xdm to start X when I went to init 5, so I commented out the
appropiate line in /usr/X11R6/xdm/Xservers
while xdm works fine, kdm does not work one bit without a display.
logging onto a runninbg xdm from remote and after that letting xdm start kde
works fine.

When the server line was still present, and I was in runlevel 3 and started
KDM, kdm started X and I remember not getting virtual terminals. I don't
know whether I tested this in runlevel 5, but I think I did get them.

This is KDE 2.2 I am talking about (redhat 7.1 stock kernel). Me trying to
update to 2.2.1 only worked up to a point (see other post from me for
details).