xdm rc scripts

[Jose M Rodriguez]

El Sábado, 19 de Febrero de 2005 19:55, Dejan Lesjak escribió:
> On Friday 18 of February 2005 22:25, Jose M Rodriguez wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I launch PRs ports/74000 and ports/74003 time ago, to make launch
> > of xdm from a rcNG script possible (Not mandatory).
> >
> > I think that this must be part of X11 clients ports, but if someone
> > find any issue with this, let me know.
>
> Hi,
> Some of my issues:
> In my opinion there is no need for a rc script to start xdm, since
> this is already taken care of by /etc/ttys which also starts gettys
> on other ttys - so all of gettys and xdm, which "[...] provides
> services similar to those provided  by [...] getty [...]" are in one
> place. This putting of configuration of things which are similar
> seems to be exactly what you intended, or am I completely mistaken?

Not really.
First, the offered scripts are the only method I know to unifor launch
xdm/gdm/kdm.  gdm can't be launch from /etc/ttys.

> Furthermore the PRs you submitted would require us to patch XFree86
> and X.Org code which is not necessary, because that code is perfectly
> fine and has worked, works and probably will work for some time to
> come. We have in X11 ports quite a few of patches which are needed to

The patches to Xorg/X11 code are not needed for the scripts.  Only
install the rc script.  The patches try to solve a real race problem
between init (the gettys) and gdm (which must be launch from
localpackage).

This is documented in main XFree86/Xorg docs.  If gdm/xdm/kdm doesn't
have 'hard assigned' an vt, it may stole vt (in the FreeBSD case,
vt0/vt1) if it get running before init launch gettys.

If this happens (I often get this in fast machines), you may end in
front of a gdm login script, with mouse, but without any keyboard
input.

> split installation of X11 distribution into separate pieces to
> hopefully ease maintenance for users in case where only one component
> needs updating. These are the patches that will never be submitted to
> upstreams, since they are completely ports specific and both of X11
> build fine without them. Your patch to
> programs/xdm/config/Imakefile would increase the burden of
> maintaining local patches for what, at least to me so far, doesn't
> seem like something that actually needs patching - xdm on FreeBSD
> will take the first virtual terminal available so hardcoding default
> doesn't seem to be the right way. Which brings me to another point...
> In your PR, you mention "race problems". Could you please explain

Allready done.

> what do you mean by this. If there is a problem that would be
> introduced with starting xdm through rc script, then that is another
> reason not to abandon the long time documented way of doing things,
> which works quite well. Note that this only goes for xdm. If there is

I still have some FreeBSD-2.x machines running, but I prefer install
FreeBSD-5.  I think there're really good reasons to _permit_, not
_force_ the use of a rcNG script.

> any script eventually included in either X11 -clients, then that
> script cannot take responsibility of starting things which come from
> other ports such as gdm or kdm (BTW, you forgot wdm). Kdm and gdm

Point me to the port and I'll take a look on this.

> have their own maintainer teams who know how to start their programs
> properly and intruding into their territory with this script seems
> neither appropriate nor wise (consider that the way in which wdm
> starts changes in one version - how intuitive would it be to expect
> people to upgrade xorg-clients to get wdm working, not to mention why
> would people who don't use wdm or any foodm for that matter need to
> upgrade their ports). In short: stuffing startup of all display
> managers into one script would seem a bad idea.

rcNG have enough resorces to cope with this without need of futher
scripts cahnges.

> So I haven't been convinced so far that making rc script for purpose
> of starting a kind of getty would be either needed or something that
> would simplify things. I don't believe that rc.conf is the only file
> users edit after their FreeBSD installation. I also don't believe
> that it would be good if things were changed so that rc.conf would be
> the only file users would need to edit. There was mentioned a
> question of policy vs. features among the thread discussing this... I
> don't believe a policy is dictated by having an example of starting
> xdm in /etc/ttys file - users can still make their own rc script if
> they want and configure it as it fits their purpose, be it "old
> style" rc script or rcNG one.
>
>
> Dejan

well, I'll close the PRs.

thanks for your time,
--
  josemi