[pkg-fso-maint] [Debian] nodm and default VT (was Re: [Debian] How can I start the phone application?)

[Luca Capello]

Hi there!

On Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:13:13 +0200, Joachim Breitner wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, den 02.04.2009, 13:59 +0200 schrieb gregor herrmann:
>> Both are the default settings for /etc/default/nodm, as seen in the
>> debconf template:
>> http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-fso/nodm.git;a=blob;f=debian/nodm.templates;h=aac033ec8ef62da5a34fa82b2d6e5c2791881990;hb=HEAD
[...]
>> I guess we need to wait for our install.sh specialists.
>
> right. Enrico added code to the package to make upgrades work, but for
> new installations, the settings need to be preseeded. Should be a matter
> of two or three lines in install.sh, plus one round of testing – any
> volunteers?

While the easiest solution would have been to simply add a preseed for
nodm, I decided to go for a more configurable one, thus install.sh now
accepts yet another user variable:

  DISPLAY_MANAGER  choose the Display Manager to be installed
            (default to nodm, possible values are any *dm
            package in the Debian archive, which could require
            a LOT of disk space; set to none if you do not
            want a Display Manager)

  http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-fso/files.git;a=commitdiff;h=503190a539a85757c00affd69a7ab9037753404a

Since we cannot add all of the possible configurations, only when
DISPLAY_MANAGER=nodm we preseed two values:

  nodm nodm/x_options string "vt4 -nolisten tcp"
  nodm nodm/enabled string "true"

  http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-fso/files.git;a=commitdiff;h=e3c8dd33799797aa87513aeb5a7d0e6abab3aca5

I successfully tested my patch for three values of DISPLAY_MANAGER
(nodm, gdm, and none) before commiting it and I discovered some
interesting stuff:

- Debian now provides 6 VTs, while I seems to remember that in the past
  only 4 of them were available (hence the reason for specifying
  vt4...), I could not find any mail about that :-(

- if no VT is specified, xinit/startx uses the first VT available (which
  IMHO is quite logic), on my FR vt2 as shown by /var/log/Xorg.0.log

- strangely enough, the above does happen with GDM as well, even if GDM
  specifies VT7 as the VT to be used.  I quickly checked the other *DMs
  in Debian:

  a) WDM starts X11 on vt2 (but then it exits for I do not know which
     reason and I do not have time to investigate right now) and it does
     not specify at all any VT in its configuration files

  b) XDM specifies vt7 in /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers and indeed it does not
     start because vt7 is not available

  c) KDM is not installable, I guess because the migration to KDE4 is
     not yet completed on armel

       kdm: Depends: kdebase-data (< 4:3.5.10.dfsg.2) but 4:4.2.2-1 \
         is to be installed

     I stopped my efforst WRT KDM here, I am not a KDE fan at all.

  The above results brought me to think that GDM was faulty and indeed I
  am not alone:

    http://bugs.debian.org/348033

Going back to nodm, a better solution would be to create (at least) two
VTs: 1 for the console and 7 for X11, thus any DM will work out of the
box.  This would also render the FR more like a desktop system, where
the first X11 is always running on vt7.  However, since I am not a tty
expert, I am not sure we can do that.

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca
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