Re: [gentoo-user] Multi-user login manager
On 7/12/21 2:21 PM, antlists wrote: Two problems - I would like to run without X, but it seems that the greeters need X to run ... I'm not familiar with the term "greeter", but I assume that you're referring to the display manager that functions as the GUI login screen. Also I want to run a multi-user system. I know you can put multiple monitors on one graphics card, and that gives you a multi-head system, but I've got TWO graphics cards. I want to plug in two keyboards, two mice, and have two users sitting there. I would naively assume ~> expect that this is possible. I would expect that you would probably need two different graphics cards. I'm guessing no more than one set of PS/2 keyboard & mouse and that the other (if not both) will be USB. Configuration may be ornery, but I would assume ~> expect that this is possible to do. After all, you're really talking about having the system function as two independent X11 servers, one for each set of keyboard, mouse, monitor. This is imminently doable with external X11 servers. I see no reason other than ornery configuration that you shouldn't be able to do this. I'm thinking old school X11. My expectations may not translate to contemporary systems. But I would be shocked if not flabbergasted if it was not possible to do what you want. Word to the wise: USB devices, especially multiple of the same type, can be annoying to deal with. You may want to look at a udev (et al.) rule to create custom device names (likely based on device serial number) and use said custom device names in your configuration files. From what I can make out, this isn't possible with sddm. Lightdm looks like it might be possible, but there isn't a man page, and I haven't installed it so I can't find out what's what. I have no idea about configuring Display Managers (XDM, sddm, Lightdm, etc.) to do this. Or can I fire up two instances of greetd? One on eg vt7 and the other on vt8? If so, how do I configure vt7 and vt8 to be my two different screen/keyboard/mouse combos? My expectation is that the various display managers run in relation / within the context of a given X server. Lightdm also says it will do vnc, but again, the lack of documentation... Which VNC? x11vnc or Xvnc? Unless you're wanting x11vnc to share a physical console, I doubt that's what you want. As Xvnc will be a purely virtual X11 server. I know I'm asking a lot, but I tend to find documentation makes sense only after you already know what it's saying ... :-) I'm hoping for a "cookbook" style approach, but I don't expect much of that because I know what I'm doing isn't very common ... Ya. I find that man pages and O'Reilly books are good /reference/ material but not good /introduction/ material. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: [gentoo-user] Multi-user login manager
On Mon, 12 Jul 2021 21:21:14 +0100 antlists wrote: > Two problems - I would like to run without X, but it seems that the > greeters need X to run ... The greeters do, but a simple login prompt doesn't... But from what I can tell, you can't run multiseat (which I think is the term for what you're wanting to do) without running X, Wayland, or Mir. The virtual terminals while you can switch between them, assume a single "user" attached to it. > Also I want to run a multi-user system. I know you can put multiple > monitors on one graphics card, and that gives you a multi-head > system, but I've got TWO graphics cards. I want to plug in two > keyboards, two mice, and have two users sitting there. This sounds like what you are describing is what this Ubuntu page[1] is calling multiseat. This appears to require having some Windowing system though it may not be true any more. The Gentoo Multiseat documentation[2] indicates it may not be required. > From what I can make out, this isn't possible with sddm. Lightdm > looks like it might be possible, but there isn't a man page, and I > haven't installed it so I can't find out what's what. The Gentoo page indicates that LightDM and SDDM both support multiseat with either elogind or systemd used. I'm not sure what login manager you're using, as that may be an issue. Consolekit is largely unsupported, > Or can I fire up two instances of greetd? One on eg vt7 and the other > on vt8? If so, how do I configure vt7 and vt8 to be my two different > screen/keyboard/mouse combos? This appears to "not work" as the VTs assume a single seat. I honestly thought that something like this was possible. > Lightdm also says it will do vnc, but again, the lack of > documentation... I have little idea about this. > And lastly, I remember something about waypipe. How easy is it to > link Windows and linux with waypipe? I'm not sure what options are available for running waypipe on Windows. My search doesn't show anything obvious. That probably would be the question to answer about that. From what I can tell about Waypipe, is if it's running, it should be easy to connect between machines relatively easily, though it's still another layer to keep in mind. > I know I'm asking a lot, but I tend to find documentation makes sense > only after you already know what it's saying ... :-) I'm hoping for a > "cookbook" style approach, but I don't expect much of that because I > know what I'm doing isn't very common ... The best I can tell about anything "cookbook" is that a big part of why that doesn't really exist is even with online stuff, by the time someone has managed to set stuff up with the current state of things, and be able to write out the documentation, that likely won't work with what someone new might be facing. I hope my looking into it (mainly because I actually want to know how difficult it would be to setup, if that's what I was wanting to do), can be helpful to you. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Multiseat [2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Multiseat
[gentoo-user] Multi-user login manager
Two problems - I would like to run without X, but it seems that the greeters need X to run ... Also I want to run a multi-user system. I know you can put multiple monitors on one graphics card, and that gives you a multi-head system, but I've got TWO graphics cards. I want to plug in two keyboards, two mice, and have two users sitting there. From what I can make out, this isn't possible with sddm. Lightdm looks like it might be possible, but there isn't a man page, and I haven't installed it so I can't find out what's what. Or can I fire up two instances of greetd? One on eg vt7 and the other on vt8? If so, how do I configure vt7 and vt8 to be my two different screen/keyboard/mouse combos? Lightdm also says it will do vnc, but again, the lack of documentation... And lastly, I remember something about waypipe. How easy is it to link Windows and linux with waypipe? I know I'm asking a lot, but I tend to find documentation makes sense only after you already know what it's saying ... :-) I'm hoping for a "cookbook" style approach, but I don't expect much of that because I know what I'm doing isn't very common ... Cheers, Wol
