Tim asked why Debian doesn't have a non-X runlevel, and this question recently came up on the Debian devel list... one big reason people want a non-x runlevel is so that when X is broken, it is possible to start without it to avoid the described below problem. I just read this post by Branden, the X maintainer for Debian, which shows why Debian's X is often better than the 'stock' X... >From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Sep 4 19:27:48 2000 Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 16:43:44 -0500 From: Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Debian-Devel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: X and runlevels On Mon, Sep 04, 2000 at 02:51:46PM +0200, Paul Slootman wrote: > Actually, that used to be a problem (I've had that as well, where an > incorrectly configured X e.g. for a different card caused an infinite > loop of switching to X and back again, so that you never have the > chance of switching with alt-ctrl-F1 and staying there). Nowadays xdm > detects that the X server is looping, and after a couple of times > stops restarting the X server. This has saved me once or twice. > Thanks, Branden! (or was it someone else's work?) The code to do this has existed in xdm for a very long time, but XFree86 always shipped with it turned off. I turned it back on (it just involves a few resource settings for the display manager, see the xdm manpage), and sent patches to XFree86 a long time ago, but the patch was ignored, and Dirk Hohndel basically told me I was an idiot for doing so, because it might unexpectedly terminate the server in the quite common case of four X session logins in a row that averaged less than 6 seconds each... If you're saying, "Huh?" right about now, that's okay, because I did too. -- G. Branden Robinson | Experience should teach us to be most on Debian GNU/Linux | our guard to protect liberty when the [EMAIL PROTECTED] | government's purposes are beneficent. http://www.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Louis Brandeis
