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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!comp.vuw.ac.nz!duncan From: duncan@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Duncan McEwan) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: X dropping characters when usin xdm Date: 7 Jul 1993 22:49:22 GMT Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand. Lines: 31 Message-ID: <21fjti$hlp@st-james.comp.vuw.ac.nz> References: <1993Jul3.222820.9549@news.weeg.uiowa.edu> <1993Jul4.190704.9506@news.arc.nasa.gov> <21cn6h$aa3@hrd769.brooks.af.mil> <1993Jul7.121717.24764@news.arc.nasa.gov> NNTP-Posting-Host: bats.comp.vuw.ac.nz In article <1993Jul7.121717.24764@news.arc.nasa.gov> root@wanderer.nsi.nasa.gov (Michael C. Newell) writes: >Why not the X section of the 386BSD FAQ? It's asked an AWFUL >lot; the text could be > > x.x.x When I run xdm from the console, it keeps losing keystrokes > and the shift keys don't always work. Why? > > You need to run xdm with the -nodaemon flag. The reason is > xdm normally detaches from the keyboard. This allows other > processes (like getty) to return to reading from the keyboard. I'm not sure that this is the full answer though. I think it may only apply when you run xdm from the command line. Even then, some quick tests I have just run have not resulted in the keyboard locking up (although I think I do remember this happening in the past). When you are running xdm from within /etc/rc.local, I don't think the nodaemon mode is applicable. I think you have to completely disable the getty on the console by turning it off in /etc/ttys. > A race condition results, where some keystrokes are sent to > xdm and others are sent to other processes. Using the > -nodaemon flag causes xdm to stay attached to the keyboard > so no other process can use it. This sounds like a reasonable explanation, although I found that even when running xdm from /etc/rc.local, I had to kill the getty causing init to spawn a new one before the keyboard locked up. Presumably others are having keyboard locking problems without doing this? Duncan