I was debugging a full-screen game with emacs and gdb. I was thinking that things would be much easier (read: possibler) if I was running the actual game in another virtual terminal. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about X to figure out how to do this. Does anyone know how? I used to have an older distribution (I can't remember which one) which had an option somewhere to open a new XServer in a different vt. Even if I managed that, how would I get my program to open in that VT instead of the current? I use SDL and OpenGL combo. I noticed that the Ctrl-Alt-F keys work to change terminals when running my program (which is how I manage to get out of sticky situation sometimes with gdb - Ctrl-Alt-F2 killall gdb), but not any of my WM's (Ion) keys bound for window management.

That's really useful thanks. If you had posted as a user I would have rated you high. Now I just have to figure out how to set environment variables for gdb from within emacs. Probably not too hard...

That's really useful - thank you again.

You can look into Xnest. With Xnest it's possible to have another X session within a window in the current X session. Depending on your configuration (which runlevel: are you loggin in in X or in console?) and what packages you have installed, you can also achieve a similar goal with gdmflexiserver: basically it spawns a second gdm graphical login screen so you can log in simultaneously as a different user using X. (Switching between the two, or more, is just like otherwise: ctrl-alt-F7, F8, ...) To use gdmflexiserver in a nested X server (Xnest), use the --xnest option.
However, don't expect good performance. A nested X server is much slower than the real thing.

In my /etc/gdm/gdm.conf, there is a section which says

[servers]
0=Standard
#1=Standard

My guess is, that if you uncomment the line 1=Standard, you will have another X server running locally.

How usefult this is, is anybody's guess

Mark

Quote:

Original post by markr My guess is, that if you uncomment the line 1=Standard, you will have another X server running locally.

Correct.

Quote:

How usefult this is, is anybody's guess

Extremely, in some cases. The OP's for instance.

And if you have a dual-head video card (such as an ATI 9700 pro), how could you tell the the second gdm server to use a different X config file?

... I think I can even plug in two USB keyboards and mice.

Quote:

Original post by Magmai Kai Holmlor And if you have a dual-head video card (such as an ATI 9700 pro), how could you tell the the second gdm server to use a different X config file?

I haven't tried this, but it sounds good to me. It's based on a mixture of extrapolation of the configuration file and some things I actually knew/looked-up.

Find the section of the configuration file (gdm.conf) that looks like this (from Debian's default GDM configuration file):

# Definition of the standard X server.[server-Standard]name=Standard servercommand=/usr/X11R6/bin/X -audit 0flexible=true

Below it (for neatness), you can write a new slightly modified version of it:

[server-Custom1]name=Custom server number 1command=/usr/X11R6/bin/X -audit 0 -xf86config /etc/X11/MyXF86Config-4flexible=true

Obviously, you should have created the MyXF86Config-4 file (or whatever you name it). Then, find the line:

0=Standard

And add below it (again, for neatness):

1=Custom1

Hopefully I'm not just making things up and all of that works properly.

Quote:

Original post by Magmai Kai Holmlor ... I think I can even plug in two USB keyboards and mice.

I don't see why not.

I have two mice plugged in right now (long story...) It works fine in both Windows and X

I'm aiming for two independant mouse cursors and two focused keyboards (one for each terminal).