Separate xSessions, ONE monitor.

[Redsandro]

Hi,

I was wondering if I can configure (x)ubuntu in a way that I have two x sessions. Same layout and everything, but just two separate. (ctrl+alt+F7/F8 or something).

See, I have one autologin, but I'd like to have another session hidden under the function key where I can login as another user, without the autologin to fire.

This saves me a lot of clicking and switching trouble when I quickly want to do something gui with the other user.

When I search for this, topics come up about dual monitor layouts where people want different monitors to behave like different computers. That's not what I want. I have one monitor layout that I want to keep the same.

[x1a4]

Hi,
It this (http://hex1a4.net/xubuntu/howto/03/) what you're looking for?

When making your changes make sure you have the following in /etc/gdm/gdm.conf-custom


[daemon]
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=username

[Redsandro]

Thanks, that's about exactly what I wanted!

However, even though I did exactly what it said, after a quick flash of a text tty login screen, the monitor goes "no signal" and not a single one of ctrl-alt-f1..f12 works anymore.

I hope it didn't break the recovery mode as well or I'm gonna have to build a cd player in there to boot the liveCD for recovery.

I guess that guide is not compatible with Xubuntu 8.10.

[Redsandro]

I lied. I restored an image and tried again, and it sort of works now. So I must have done something wrong. I guess I screwed up either mixing a capital letter with a small letter or by not leaving blank lines in gdm.conf-custom. Not sure.

Anyway, the autologin is consistently going to TTY1 now. The X servers for TTY6 and TTY7 are on TTY5 and TTY6. TTY1 is also in 256 colors while the rest is in 24 bit colors.

[Redsandro]

bump

any thoughts on how to make this work in x8.10?

[Jose Catre-Vandis]

Try this (you might need to undo what you have already done, or look at a different tty)


CTRL+ALT+F1
login with user and pass
then type this:

startx -- :1
then

CTRL+ALT+F9 <-- this is the default or whatever your first free X session tty is
You should get a gui screen.

I did this on my Xubuntu 8.10 and it worked after a fashion, but most of my desktop settings (background, panel locations, icons etc) were not present. But I had a working desktop.

See this post on the forum:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=185555
and to really big it up, check out bohdi's howto here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=271674

[Redsandro]

Thanks for the input, but I just get X - with the X mouse cursor. absolutely nothing is present. I like to do GUI stuff like login at least, and it would be okay if my settings (like desktop) are gone. But now 'everything' is gone. :P

I'll try and see if I can understand the scripts from the second link you provided so I could tweak them just to start another similar session. Thanks for the link.