GDM 2 does not work 'out of the box' if you install the script /usr/X11R6/etc/rc.d/gdm.sh and reboot your system, as per the instructions in /usr/ports/x11/gdm2/pkg-message. On bootup, the GDM login screen appears as expected, but does not have keyboard focus. Nor is it possible to use any combination of ALT+Fn or CTRL+ALT+Fn to switch the display to any other VT. As a result, it renders your machine pretty unusable. (It turns out that the keyboard is focused on /dev/ttyv1, but the display is focused on GDM. Don't ask me how I discovered this. It's tedious.) This appears to be because the VTAllocation parameter of 'gdm.conf' doesn't work under FreeBSD[1], and so X grabs the first unused VT it can find. Since this is during the boot-up process, no other VTs have yet been set up, this causes lots of confusion when 'init' later attempts to set up a VT that's already there. [1] It wouldn't matter if it did, since the default VT in gdm.conf (vt7, or ttyv6) is 'on' in /etc/ttys, so init would still hate us. Fix: Either: 1. Add commentary to /usr/ports/x11/gdm2/pkg-message, telling users that they need to tailor gdm.conf to their system. This is probably non-optimal, as gdm2 is usually installed as part of gnome2, and you're likely to miss the message if you go for a coffee (very likely if you're installing the GNOME port!) Or: 2. Apply the following patch to 'config/gdm.conf.in' (replaces '/usr/ports/x11/gdm2/files/patch-ab'). The relevant changes are to lines 96 and 284; this disables VTAllocate and explicitly defines the VTY number in the standard X server definition. Note that I've chosen 'vt9' as the default, since the 9th VT (ttyv8) is the default VT for X in /etc/ttys under FreeBSD 4.x-STABLE. How-To-Repeat: Install /usr/X11R6/etc/rc.d/gdm.sh as per the instructions in /usr/ports/x11/gdm2/pkg-message, then reboot your machine without making any changes to /usr/X11R6/etc/gdm/gdm.conf.
State Changed From-To: open->closed Over to maintainers.
Responsible Changed From-To: freebsd-ports->gnome Committed, thanks!