Subject: Loading X Windows

From: Noam Rettig <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 21:21:30 -0500

Is it possible to start an X session from the shell?
Also, does X allow multiple sessions at once?

Thanks In Advance,

[email-masked]

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From: Rick Hawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 23:26:04 CDT

> Is it possible to start an X session from the shell?

yes.  type "startx" at the command line, as any user, and the machine is
transformed.  you can end with alt-ctl-backspace.

> Also, does X allow multiple sessions at once?

what do you mean by this.  you can have multiple windows open.  type
"xterm &" to launch an extra xterm, for example.  Or you can log in from
another x-capable machine and open windows.

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From: Buddha Buck <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 00:36:07 -0400

> another x-capable machine and open windows.
Or, if you are desparate and foolish enough (and have a lot of memory), 
you -can- run multiple X servers on different virtual consoles.  I've 
done this in the past.  I don't recommend it.

I have also seen multiple simultaneous X servers running on a MkLinux 
machine.  Unfortunately, the current version of MkLinux for PowerPC ony 
supports one console (not even serial support yet), so it made the 
machine a bit unusable and forced a reboot.

--
     Buddha Buck                      [email-masked]
"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our
liberty depends upon the chaos and cacaphony of the unfettered speech
the First Amendment protects."  -- A.L.A. v. U.S. Dept. of Justice

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From: Guy Maor <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 08:56:13 -0500 (CDT)

> done this in the past.  I don't recommend it.

I run multiple X servers (at different bit depths) on different
consoles all the time, and it works great.  I have 32 megs, but the
other X server gets totally swapped out.

BTW, if you want to do this, there's a small bug in xinit.  If you
start the second server as 'xinit', it'll get started on :1.0, but
$DISPLAY is still set to ':0.0' in .xinitrc.  If you start it as 'xinit
-- :1.0', it's ok.

Guy

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From: Chris Walker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 17:20:20 +0100

> done this in the past.  I don't recommend it.

The command I use to do this is:

X :1.0 -query <hostname>

For even more replace :1.0 with :2.0 etc.

I've used it occasionally so that I can don't have to reconfigure my machine
(which boots into X) to run an X session on a remote machine as well as a
session on my local machine.

I hope this helps.

Chris