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