I'm sure many people know this already, but probably lots of people
don't. You can have multiple people logged in with graphical displays
simultaneously.
E.g. to start up X on 2 displays, two users could log in on two text
consoles. Then type "startx -- :0" on one, and "startx -- :1" on the
other, and use Ctrl-Alt-F7 and Ctrl-Alt-F8 to flip between them. (By
default, Linux is set up so that F1-F6 are text consoles and F7-F12 are
graphical screens, so :0 is reached by Ctrl-Alt-F7 and :1 is reached by
Ctrl-Alt-F8.
In general, your run startx like:
startx "client args" -- :$DISPLAY_NUMBER "server args"
Here's a script I wrote called "nextx" for finding the next available X
display. You can use it like this:
dnum=`nextx -v`
startx -- :$dnum
luke
#!/bin/sh
#
# Determine the next available X display.
#
TMPF=/tmp/nx$$
if [ "x$1" = "x-v" ]
then
verbose=echo
else
verbose=":"
fi
#
# Output from ps ax, for X, should look something like:
#
# 1551 ? S 0:02 /etc/X11/X :0 -bpp 16 -auth /home/stella/.Xauthority
#
# So we just grab the display number after the `:'.
#
ps ax | grep "/X " | grep -v grep | sed 's/.*\/X ://;s/ .*//' | sort -n > $TMPF
dnum=0
while [ $dnum -lt 4 ]
do
read actnum
if [ "$dnum" != "$actnum" ]
then
#
# We've found the lowest display number not in use.
#
echo "$dnum"
$verbose "Your displays will be: Text: Ctrl-Alt-F`expr $dnum + 1`" \
", Graphics: Ctrl-Alt-F`expr $dnum + 7`" >&2
/bin/rm $TMPF
exit 0
fi
dnum=`expr $dnum + 1`
done < $TMPF
/bin/rm $TMPF
echo "4 X displays already in use" >&2
exit 1
