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From: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey)
Organisation: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, 36325 Feldatal, Germany
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Subject: Re: XF86 & fvwm Problem, Help? (fwd)
To: jdunham@fc.net (Jerry Dunham)
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 14:42:23 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: questions@FreeBSD.org (FreeBSD Questions)
In-Reply-To: <199609171234.HAA11255@freeside.fc.net> from "Jerry Dunham" at Sep 17, 96 07:34:51 am
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Jerry Dunham writes:
>
> Branson Matheson babbled:
>> You might also look at using xdm instead .. with that you will have
>> a graphical login prompt. And it will automagically restart every
>> time you logout. The nice thing about this and freebsd is that you
>> can still use a text console with syscons.
>
> So far, this seems to be terrible advice.  I messed with xdm more this
> morning, and it does exactly what he says it does - automagically restart.
> I am completely unable to get out of it.

Bummer, isn't it?  FWIW, I've just got a free SCO Open Deathtrap, and
it does just the same thing, though first it kills your mouse so you
can't do anything inside X either.

> If I've logged in as root I can
> get back to the login screen, but I can't quit from there: ^D doesn't work
> and neither does your suggestion of ^[alt]-[backspace].

ctrl-alt-backspace will kill the X server, which xdm will then
cheerfully restart.

> The only way out seems to be to login as root and type "shutdown -h
> now".  If I've logged in as dunham I can't even do that, and su
> doesn't work.

Fix your /etc/group (yes, I know I've told you, but I'm copying
-questions): assuming your name is dunham, change the line reading

  wheel:*:0:root,grog,bin

to read

  wheel:*:0:root,grog,bin,dunham

su looks at this to decide whether to let you su or not.

> I'm going back to startx, unless you can give me some reason why I
> should consider xdm that isn't obvious to the uninitiated, and tell
> me how to REALLY get out of it.

xdm is great for people who never want (nor need) to see a character
mode display.  Unfortunately, not everything runs under X, and xdm
effectively takes away some of your freedom.  I use xinit myself, and
for the life of me I can't recall what the difference is from startx.
Not much, anyway.  You could consider them interchangeable.

Greg