Viewing the console from X

[Robert Brockway]

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004, William O'Higgins wrote:

> xconsole does not seem to be the answer - it took a bit of kicking to
> get it to do anything except tell me that it "Can't open the console".
> I fiddled the permissions on /dev/console and then started xconsole
> thusly:

Starting it with sudo would be better.  Don't break the perms on 
/dev/console too badly :)

> xconsole -file /dev/console

I suspect xconsole has not been used much in years.   Changes have been 
made to the way the Linux console works (wrt virtual consoles) and maybe 
xconsole was not kept up to date with that.

> And it no longer complained, but it started stealing keystrokes and
> spitting up "H*P*P*P*H*H*H*H*P", which I found both annoying and

Subliminal advetising for HP? :)

> As for opening a terminal and starting programs from there, that doesn't
> fit my workflow.  I use OpenBox keyboard shortcuts to open my programs,
> and I'm not going back.  Besides, opening a terminal to launch a
> terminal is amusingly recursive, but unhelpful.
>
> Thanks for the offerings so far.
>
> Any other thoughts?

Pass console=/dev/tty1 to the kernel at boot time.  The messages should 
all then go to /dev/tty1 regardless of which virtual console is up.  I 
seem to recall I did do this years ago.  Make sure a getty is running on 
/dev/tty1 :)

The same effect is available if you use a serial console too.  Serial 
consoles rock for servers.

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Phone: 416-669-3073 Email: rbrockway-wgAaPJgzrDxH4x6Dk/4f9A at public.gmane.org http://www.opentrend.net
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