On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 7:22 AM, Bill Longman <bill.longman@gmail.com>wrote:

> On 08/24/2010 08:36 PM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> > In order to make progress on this thing, it's useful to be able to
> > control the display manager.  My problem has been that going to
> /etc/init.d
> > and commanding "./xdm stop" seems to work, but has no effect on KDE.
> > Manually killing kde (ps -ef | grep kde, etc) just starts another one.
> > I finally figured out that I have to find the 'kdm' process and kill
> > that, then a logoff or Ctl_Alt_BS actually gets rid of X, so I can do
> > things like
> > "X -configure" and so on.
>
> You ~should~ be able to log onto a console vty by using Ctrl-Alt-Fn
> (where n=1-6). You can then log on from there and commence all manner of
> Gentacular shelly goodness.
>
> There's really no need to kill the display manager ever. In fact, you
> can have more than one running at a time.
>
> > Oddly, "./xdm start" worked fine, and was responsible for kdm being
> > started.   But isn't it odd that the display "manager" has such weak
> > control on its "subordinate"?  Big PITA for me.
>
> Yeah, that's just a semantic problem, really. The generic term is "xdm"
> but depending upon your setup, you can plug in any display manager.
>

Sorry, but that has several bits of misinformation.

There are 2 or three activities that the system refuses to perform while the
display is
active.  They require X to be shut down, and you must therefore use one of
the non-X
console ptys.

"xdm" is not a generic term, or at least I didn't mean it that way. It's the
package x11-apps/xdm.

Look it up.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD