[pkg-fso-maint] Bug#502120: xserver-xorg: allows different /etc/X11/X symlinks as well as /usr/bin/X

Julien Cristau jcristau at debian.org
Mon Oct 13 18:45:26 UTC 2008


On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 20:14:17 +0200, Luca Capello wrote:

> Please keep the Debian FSO Team [1] mailing list always Cc:ed.  If you
> do so, no need to cc: me, I read the list.
> 
> I discovered these issues because of the Xglamo KDrive server [2].  The
> problem is described also at [3].
> 
> Basically, AFAIK xinit/startx requires both /etc/X11/X and /usr/bin/X:
> let's see both in details, at least as I understood the situation.
> Since I'm not an X11 expert, feel free to point me at documentation I
> need to read :-)
> 
/usr/bin/X is a setuid wrapper, which does some basic permission checks
and then exec()s /etc/X11/X.  So /etc/X11/X should point to the actual X
server you want to use when running /usr/bin/X.

startx/xinit run /usr/bin/X by default, but can just as well start any
other X server (be it /usr/bin/Xephyr, /usr/bin/Xvfb or /usr/bin/Xglamo)
based on /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc, $HOME/.xserverrc or command-line
arguments.

There used to be some logic to change the /etc/X11/X symlink via debconf
until about a year ago (it used to be needed when we had hardware
specific X servers, which means before XFree86 4.0 iirc), so it might be
possible to reintroduce that if you feel that Xglamo need it.

Cheers,
Julien



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