*BSD News Article 22333


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From: jdlacour@dlsunf.dal.mobil.com (J. D. La Coursiere [Jeff])
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Repeat of XFree question
Date: 13 Oct 1993 21:32:24 GMT
Organization: Mobil Oil Corporation
Lines: 41
Sender: jdlacour@dlsunf (J. D. La Coursiere [Jeff])
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <29hs58$2mn@dlsn31>
References: <11OCT93.08302892@tifrvax.tifr.res.in> <CEt1pD.HK@strix.cluster.sub.org>
NNTP-Posting-Host: dlsunf.dal.mobil.com

In article <CEt1pD.HK@strix.cluster.sub.org>, ura@strix.cluster.sub.org (Ulf Andrick) writes:
> In <11OCT93.08302892@tifrvax.tifr.res.in> bhiksha@tifrvax.tifr.res.in writes:
> : XFree86-1.3u1, on NetBSD 0.9 gives me the following problems:
> 
> : 1)xconsole (or xterm -C) gives me the console (or term) with the following
> :   message on it `couldn't open console'
> 
> Have you tried that as root? (Only root should be able to redirect the 
> console.)
> 
> -- 
> Ulf Andrick
> ura@strix.cluster.sub.org


Actually, the user that logged in to the console's getty/login should own
/dev/console (in which case xterm -C would work fine).  Check the owner/perms
on /dev/console.  If you are using xdm (which requires some fixing to be
used with NetBSD 0.9 to incorporate the new passwd db) than you need to
incorporate the scripts GiveConsole/TakeConsole (in /usr/lib/X11/xdm -
assuming you have made /usr/*/X11 links to the /usr/X386/* dirs) into your
xdm-config file like so:

xdm-config:DisplayManager._0.startup:   /usr/lib/X11/xdm/GiveConsole
xdm-config:DisplayManager._0.reset:     /usr/lib/X11/xdm/TakeConsole


This accomplishes the same thing that /bin/login does for the user's tty.

You may run into it not working if you did something like:
* logged into the console as foo, su dude, xinit (foo owns console)
* umask setting of user chmod's the tty unreadable

probably various other things....

Jeff LaCoursiere
Network Admin
Mobil Research Facility
Dallas, TX

lacoursj@dal.mobil.com