kde and 'disappeared' tty session

[James Gray]

On Monday 06 March 2006 04:57, mollica.luca at hsr.it wrote:
> I have recently seen my alternative not-graphical session of KDE in
> the latest Kubuntu release disappear.
>
> After some setup on some features (WMvare workstatio, some software
> for my job) that did not involve any graphical/video card issue, I
> have realized that, even if the system was perfectcly stable on the
> graphical session (i.e., Ctrl+Alt+F7 for KDE switching), I could not
> reach any not graphcal mode on diffrerent tty consolles on other KDE
> issues (i.e. Ctrl+Alt+F1, F2 ... etc etc until F7 resulted  in a blank
> screen).

I've seen this before on Matorx cards - specifically the early G400 series.  
The problem with those cards stemmed from the fact they didn't handle VESA 
modes properly.  The fix was to disable the VGA console option during boot.  
The side effect was that I only got 80x25 text consoles (bleh!).  Eventually 
Matrox came to the party and fixed their borked video BIOS and balance was 
restored to the force.

To disable the VGA console you need to remove any "vga=???" elements from the 
kernel boot options in /boot/grub/menu.lst.  Look for a line like this:
# nonaltoptions=quiet splash vga=791

Once you've removed the vga=??? bit, run "sudo update-grub" and this will 
rewrite your boot options :)

If you're still getting a VGA console, try "vga=0" instead.  This forces a 
plain 80x25 text console.

> Please also tell me where to look for this kind of problem and, in
> case, what to attach to the next mail: it is the first time that I
> meet such a thing, and the only thing I have noticed is that in /dev/
> only a single tty element is present.

Hmmm - that is odd.  Here's what I get on my system:
$ ls -1 /dev/*tty* | wc -l
369

In other words, there are 369 *tty* entries in /dev.  The 6 tty's you're 
trying to use are actually spawned by "init" during boot.  
Specifically, /etc/inittab should have a section that looks like this:

# Note that on most Debian systems tty7 is used by the X Window System,
# so if you want to add more getty's go ahead but skip tty7 if you run X.
#
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6

tty[1-6] corresponds to ALT+F[1-6].  You can actually to write a tty that 
doesn't have a shell attached to it.  Have a look at tty12 (ALT+F12) after 
you type this:
sudo -i
echo "Hello world" > /dev/tty12
[CTRL+D]

My point is, that if you've only got ONE *tty* in /dev then I'd say there's a 
problem with your kernel options, hotplug or udev setup :-/

HTH,

James
-- 
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory keeps all its data in an old gray trunk.
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