Re: [gentoo-user] How to stop X

[David Relson <relson@osagesoftware.com>]

On Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:22:26 -0500
Dale wrote:

> David Relson wrote:
> > On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 15:21:43 -0700
> > Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> >
> >   
> >> On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Paul
> >> Hartman<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>     
> >>> On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 2:33 PM, Kevin O'Gorman<kogorman@gmail.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>       
> >>>> I'm having trouble configuring X, and to save time I'd like to be
> >>>> able to shut it down, edit some stuff, and start it up again.
> >>>>
> >>>> What is the gentoo way to do that?
> >>>>         
> >>> It depends on how you started X in the first place. If you did a
> >>> "startx" (or similar), logging out should be all you need to do to
> >>> get out of X. If you use a login manager, XDM/GDM/KDM then it'll
> >>> restart itself so you'll need to switch to a VT (ctrl-alt-F1) and
> >>> then sudo /etc/init.d/xdm stop to shut down XDM (and therefore X).
> >>> You can then rmmod your video drivers or do whatever changes you
> >>> want to do. sudo /etc/init.d/xdm start to bring it back up.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>       
> >> Several of you suggested "/etc/init.d/xdm start" or so to get it
> >> (re)started.  It doesn't work.  Instead the start-stop daemon
> >> complains of not being able to stat "/usr/bin/xdm" which doesn't
> >> exist.  And no I didn't mispell it.  I've never seen this before an
> >> I'm baffled.
> >>
> >> ++ kevin
> >>     
> >
> > Hi Kevin,
> >
> > This weekend I needed to stop and start X a lot because I was
> > experimenting with running dosemu from a tty command line and the
> > DOS application I'm running under dosemu hangs the command line.
> >
> > Using an ssh session (from another machine) I found that
> > "/etc/init.d/xdm stop" works to stop X. However,
> > restarting is a bit tricky since "/etc/init.d/xdm start" fails
> > because of files in "/var/lib/init.d/*/xdm".  If one runs "rm
> > -rf /var/lib/init.d/*/xdm" then runs "/etc/init.d/xdm start" one is
> > good to go.
> >
> > HTH,
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> >   
> 
> Then /etc/init.d/xdm zap may be easier and cleaner.
> 
> Dale

I hadn't known of zap.  Indeed it's an easier way to do the cleanup.
However, use it _after_ stop.  

I tried it instead of stop.  What it does is remove the 
/var/init.d/*/xdm files.  With them gone,  "/etc/init.d/xdm status"
can't tell that xdm has been started and "/etc/init.d/xdm stop" doesn't
do anything.  I had to frog around to fix the problem.

Be careful !!

David