On 2023-05-15 18:13, Michael Fischer wrote:

But I don't want to log out of my VT7 X session and change window managers, I want to run 2 different WMs on 2 different VTs *at the same time*.

Create a test user, and switch user. The settings you choose for that user will not affect those for your ordinary user account.

On 2023-05-15 19:38, Michael Fischer wrote:

On Mon, May 15, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

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On 2023-05-15 18:13, Michael Fischer wrote:

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But I don't want to log out of my VT7 X session and change window managers, I want to run 2 different WMs on 2 different VTs *at the same time*.

Create a test user, and switch user. The settings you choose for that user will not affect those for your ordinary user account.

Indeed.

I created the test user and logged in on VT2 as that user. But how to start the DM (or WM) on VT2 without crashing the DM+X running on VT7?

Closest I got was `sudo startx -- :1` (unless I want to setuid X, but I'd rather see if there's a way to get lightdm running on multiple VTs). Still, even doing this caused lightdm to log out the original user on VT7.

Thanks.

Michael In your application launcher, you should be able to find an option to switch user. Choose that, and you should find yourself in a new login screen for VT8, and the two sessions run independently of each other.

Assuming you're booting into multi-user target (runlevel 5), of course.

On 2023-05-16 04:17, Michael Fischer wrote:

On Mon, May 15, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

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On 2023-05-15 19:38, Michael Fischer wrote:

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On Mon, May 15, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

...

On 2023-05-15 18:13, Michael Fischer wrote:

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But I don't want to log out of my VT7 X session and change window managers, I want to run 2 different WMs on 2 different VTs *at the same time*.

Create a test user, and switch user. The settings you choose for that user will not affect those for your ordinary user account.

Indeed.

I created the test user and logged in on VT2 as that user. But how to start the DM (or WM) on VT2 without crashing the DM+X running on VT7?

Closest I got was `sudo startx -- :1` (unless I want to setuid X, but I'd rather see if there's a way to get lightdm running on multiple VTs). Still, even doing this caused lightdm to log out the original user on VT7.

Thanks.

Michael In your application launcher, you should be able to find an option to switch user. Choose that, and you should find yourself in a new login screen for VT8, and the two sessions run independently of each other.

Assuming you're booting into multi-user target (runlevel 5), of course.

What is this "application launcher" of which you speak?

I'm doing CTRL-ALT-F2 -> console login prompt -> shell on VT2.

What I wonder is what next from that shell on VT2.

For example, I am using XFCE. I find the place in the menu to exit the session, but instead, I choose "switch user". I can then login with another user, and another desktop if I wish. Once the second user is started, I can switch back and forth by pressing [Ctrl][Alt][F7] or [Ctrl][Alt][F8]. I could start another one on [Ctrl][Alt][F9]. I can exit any one, and get the login prompt in that space instead. Easy peasy. (Details may vary per desktop and display manager.) The display manager takes care of things like assigning control of sound or the cdrom tray to the user whose desktop has the focus, who is assumed to have the chair. Warning: switching to same user, different desktop, may or may not work right or at all. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.4 x86_64 at Telcontar)

On 2023-05-15 21:04, Michael Fischer wrote:

On Tue, May 16, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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What is this "application launcher" of which you speak?

I'm doing CTRL-ALT-F2 -> console login prompt -> shell on VT2.

What I wonder is what next from that shell on VT2.

For example, I am using XFCE. I find the place in the menu to exit the session, but instead, I choose "switch user". I can then login with another user, and another desktop if I wish. Once the second user is started, I can switch back and forth by pressing [Ctrl][Alt][F7] or [Ctrl][Alt][F8]. I could start another one on [Ctrl][Alt][F9]. I can exit any one, and get the login prompt in that space instead.

Easy peasy.

(Details may vary per desktop and display manager.)

Yes, well.... FVWM doesn't have this (at least, my setup doesn't...) Ironically, I'm doing this exercise to see how well I can imitate my fvwm setup with XFCE4....

Check the RootMenu. The website says restart/quit FVWM is in there, so switch user should probably be there as well.

...

The display manager takes care of things like assigning control of sound or the cdrom tray to the user whose desktop has the focus, who is assumed to have the chair.

Warning: switching to same user, different desktop, may or may not work right or at all.

So when you say the "switch user" functionality lets you chose not only a different user with with which to log in, it gives you a choice of "desktop", where "desktop" corresponds to a different VT (other than VT7) on which it will run?

Different user, yes. Different terminal, not the way you are thinking about it. You have no choice which terminal will be used. A new terminal will be created (VT8), and the login manager will be started in that. This session is run as a new session, all handled by the system, so unless you log in as the same user, they will run completely independently of each other.

On 2023-05-15 23:02, Michael Fischer wrote:

On Mon, May 15, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

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Check the RootMenu. The website says restart/quit FVWM is in there, so switch user should probably be there as well.

Nope, its not.

1. XTerm 2. Issue fvwm commands D. Desktop Menu > R. Restart fvwm X. Exit fvwm

(that's the "builtin menu") Well, it has to be in there somewhere, or it is rather useless as a DM in a multi-user graphical environment. What happens if you select "Restart fvwm"?

...

Different user, yes. Different terminal, not the way you are thinking about it. You have no choice which terminal will be used. A new terminal will be created (VT8), and the login manager will be started in that. This session is run as a new session, all handled by the system, so unless you log in as the same user, they will run completely independently of each other.

Yeah, I was starting to wonder if I needed to use the "next VT" (aka VT8). Except that if I CTRL-ALT-8, it doesn't have either a displaymanager interface, nor a login prompt.

VT8 does not exist until it is created specifically to run a second graphical environment. For that matter, VT7 does not exist either, if you are running runlevel 3. If you switch/boot into runlevel 5, systemd creates a new terminal, VT7, then loads the login manager into that terminal.

On 2023-05-16 09:56, Michael Fischer wrote:

On Mon, May 15, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

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On 2023-05-15 23:02, Michael Fischer wrote:

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On Mon, May 15, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

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Check the RootMenu. The website says restart/quit FVWM is in there, so switch user should probably be there as well.

Nope, its not.

1. XTerm 2. Issue fvwm commands D. Desktop Menu > R. Restart fvwm X. Exit fvwm

(that's the "builtin menu") Well, it has to be in there somewhere, or it is rather useless as a DM in a multi-user graphical environment. What happens if you select "Restart fvwm"?

FVWM is a WM (one of the oldest), not a DM nor a DE.

Michael So make the appropriate modification to what I said. It's still pretty useless if you do not have a way to run multiple graphical sessions in a multi-user graphical environment.

On Tue, May 16, 2023 at 6:05 AM Michael Fischer wrote:

On Tue, May 16, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

...

What is this "application launcher" of which you speak?

I'm doing CTRL-ALT-F2 -> console login prompt -> shell on VT2.

What I wonder is what next from that shell on VT2.

For example, I am using XFCE. I find the place in the menu to exit the session, but instead, I choose "switch user". I can then login with another user, and another desktop if I wish. Once the second user is started, I can switch back and forth by pressing [Ctrl][Alt][F7] or [Ctrl][Alt][F8]. I could start another one on [Ctrl][Alt][F9]. I can exit any one, and get the login prompt in that space instead.

Easy peasy.

(Details may vary per desktop and display manager.)

Yes, well.... FVWM doesn't have this (at least, my setup doesn't...) Ironically, I'm doing this exercise to see how well I can imitate my fvwm setup with XFCE4....

If you are using lightdm you can use dm-tool to tell the display manager to open the second session. dm-tool switch-to-user username

...

The display manager takes care of things like assigning control of sound or the cdrom tray to the user whose desktop has the focus, who is assumed to have the chair.

Warning: switching to same user, different desktop, may or may not work right or at all.

So when you say the "switch user" functionality lets you chose not only a different user with with which to log in, it gives you a choice of "desktop", where "desktop" corresponds to a different VT (other than VT7) on which it will run?

Switch user starts a session on a new VT which is normally auto-selected. It is done via display manager (even if some desktop environment has it somewhere in its menu it actually talks to display manager).

On 2023-05-15 20:17, Michael Fischer wrote:

On Mon, May 15, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

...

On 2023-05-15 19:38, Michael Fischer wrote:

...

On Mon, May 15, Darryl Gregorash wrote:

...

On 2023-05-15 18:13, Michael Fischer wrote:

...

But I don't want to log out of my VT7 X session and change window managers, I want to run 2 different WMs on 2 different VTs *at the same time*.

Create a test user, and switch user. The settings you choose for that user will not affect those for your ordinary user account.

Indeed.

I created the test user and logged in on VT2 as that user. But how to start the DM (or WM) on VT2 without crashing the DM+X running on VT7?

Closest I got was `sudo startx -- :1` (unless I want to setuid X, but I'd rather see if there's a way to get lightdm running on multiple VTs). Still, even doing this caused lightdm to log out the original user on VT7.

Thanks.

Michael In your application launcher, you should be able to find an option to switch user. Choose that, and you should find yourself in a new login screen for VT8, and the two sessions run independently of each other.

Assuming you're booting into multi-user target (runlevel 5), of course.

What is this "application launcher" of which you speak?

I'm doing CTRL-ALT-F2 -> console login prompt -> shell on VT2.

What I wonder is what next from that shell on VT2.

Michael

The application launcher should be on whatever task manager bar the current desktop is using. For example, in KDE by default it is on the extreme left of the task manager. When first booting your system, you boot into a login manager (eg sddm), right? You should be using the same, not logging into some text console, to log in as a second user.

On 2023-05-15 21:05, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Darryl Gregorash [05-15-23 22:04]:

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In your application launcher, you should be able to find an option to switch user. Choose that, and you should find yourself in a new login screen for VT8, and the two sessions run independently of each other.

Assuming you're booting into multi-user target (runlevel 5), of course.

but multi-user.target is runlevel 3 and graphical.target is runlevel 5 (corresponds to)

I'm still sorting out all the changes that systemd has brought to the system. Thanks for this reminder.

On 2023-05-16 02:18, Felix Miata wrote:

J Leslie Turriff composed on 2023-05-15 19:02 (UTC-0500):

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Depending on your login manager (gdm, tdm, etc.) there should be an option to choose a different window manager (Gnome, Trinity, etc.). Look for some sort of option button on the login screen.

That's for a same user usage, after logging out of the present session. I'm not sure what he wants can still be done without the extra session coming from logging in as a different user. Most DMs do support a menu option to switch to a different user without logging out, or trying from a tty with startx. These are after all multi-user operating systems. Officially, openSUSE hasn't supported startx for several years, but for some configurations, startx still works, and for some other distros, it's still and/or better supported.

Running level 3, there was a way, but I don't find my old notes on this. Maybe: one user startx kde -- :1 another user startx kde -- 2:1 I haven't tried that in well over a decade. Far easier with the display manager proper. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.4 x86_64 at Telcontar)

* Patrick Shanahan [05-15-23 23:04]:

* Carlos E. R. [05-15-23 22:59]:

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On 2023-05-16 02:18, Felix Miata wrote:

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J Leslie Turriff composed on 2023-05-15 19:02 (UTC-0500):

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Depending on your login manager (gdm, tdm, etc.) there should be an option to choose a different window manager (Gnome, Trinity, etc.). Look for some sort of option button on the login screen.

That's for a same user usage, after logging out of the present session. I'm not sure what he wants can still be done without the extra session coming from logging in as a different user. Most DMs do support a menu option to switch to a different user without logging out, or trying from a tty with startx. These are after all multi-user operating systems. Officially, openSUSE hasn't supported startx for several years, but for some configurations, startx still works, and for some other distros, it's still and/or better supported.

Running level 3, there was a way, but I don't find my old notes on this.

Maybe:

one user startx kde -- :1

another user startx kde -- 2:1

I haven't tried that in well over a decade.

Far easier with the display manager proper.

I run icewm and plasma5 concurrently and have for years. I start icewm from multi-user in a tty, startx /usr/bin/icewm-session-default and plasma from graphical

startx no longer requires "-- :[tty#]" at least in sddm

and both as the same logged in user. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet oftc

Michael Fischer composed on 2023-05-15 23:08 (UTC-0400):

Patrick Shanahan wrote:

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I run icewm and plasma5 concurrently and have for years. I start icewm from multi-user in a tty, startx /usr/bin/icewm-session-default and plasma from graphical

...

startx no longer requires "-- :[tty#]" at least in sddm

I'm using lightdm to spawn fvwm. I suppose I could try `startx /usr/bin/startxfce4` ? I'd still need to setuid on X itself for this, yes?

Once upon a time, when Stefan Dirsh[1] wasn't yet adamant that startx was unsupported, he wrote correct syntax to specify session to have startx run was: WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/bin/icewm startx Lots of apparent alternatives :p : # ls -Gg /disks/root3/usr/bin/icewm* lrwxrwxrwx 1 23 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewm -> /etc/alternatives/icewm -rwxr-xr-x 1 1575040 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewm-default -rwxr-xr-x 1 1562752 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewm-lite -rwxr-xr-x 1 62888 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewm-menu-fdo -rwxr-xr-x 1 13398 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewm-menu-xrandr lrwxrwxrwx 1 31 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewm-session -> /etc/alternatives/icewm-session -rwxr-xr-x 1 67880 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewm-session-default -rwxr-xr-x 1 67880 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewm-session-lite lrwxrwxrwx 1 25 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewmbg -> /etc/alternatives/icewmbg -rwxr-xr-x 1 181032 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewmbg-default -rwxr-xr-x 1 185120 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewmbg-lite lrwxrwxrwx 1 27 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewmhint -> /etc/alternatives/icewmhint -rwxr-xr-x 1 22736 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewmhint-default -rwxr-xr-x 1 18640 May 10 10:39 /usr/bin/icewmhint-lite # [1] Stefan Dirsch is SUSE's apparent primary X & NVidia driver maintainer. -- Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion, based on faith, not based on science. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata

On 2023-05-16 05:27, Felix Miata wrote:

Michael Fischer composed on 2023-05-15 23:08 (UTC-0400):

...

Patrick Shanahan wrote:

Once upon a time, when Stefan Dirsh[1] wasn't yet adamant that startx was unsupported, he wrote correct syntax to specify session to have startx run was:

WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/bin/icewm startx

This I do have in my old notes: startx kde -- :1 WINDOWMANAGER="blackbox" startx -- :1 startx blackbox -- :1 Command "wmlist" showed the posible environments to use. But the tool is no longer installed and can not find it. cer@nimrodel:~> wmlist kde gnome windowmaker enlightenment blackbox openbox fvwm2 icewm mwm qvwm twm Notice that a desktop started via startx doesn't get all features. Meaning opening usb sticks, sound, cdrom, etc. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.4 x86_64 at Telcontar)

On 16.05.2023 19:02, Michael Fischer wrote:

On Tue, May 16, Andrei Borzenkov wrote:

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On Tue, May 16, 2023 at 2:44 AM Michael Fischer wrote:

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I could *swear* I'd seen this was possible, but....

Already running lightdm->fvwm on vt7 (my usual setup).

I would like to experiment with another windowmananger without having to drop my normal setup. I *thought* it was something like

1. Get into another vt, log in. 2. `startx -- :1`

However when I tried that it trashed the X session on vt7.

What exactly does "trashed the X session" mean?

Just for clarification: if I switch back to VT7 with CTRL-ALT-F7, the gui is gone and I'm looking at the end of the startup console lines.

This could be due to X server crashing or due to your GUI session deciding to finish or due to your GUI session crashing. Without logs it is impossible to even start guessing.