Running Linux in Low Memory

[Brian Densmore]

You know ctrl-alt-f1 gets you to a virtual console
not ctrl-alt-f7. Of course different systems may launch
X on different VCs. So you may need to walk through each
VC to find it. I know of two that are commonly used.
VC#3 and #7. It really is dependent on how many VCs
you have. X will take the first non-assigned VC. Unless
it is run in foreground and then it will also tie up the
VC it was launched on.

Brian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Leo J Mauler [mailto:webgiant at juno.com]
> Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 6:51 PM
> To: kclug at kclug.org
> Subject: Re: Running Linux in Low Memory
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 06:48:29 -0600 (CST) Duane Attaway
> <dattaway at dattaway.org> writes:
> > On Sun, 23 Nov 2003, Leo J Mauler wrote:
> > 
> > > While this is covered in the "Small-Memory HOWTO", I 
> > > thought I'd mention it anyway.
> > > 
> > > You remove Virtual Consoles by bringing up /etc/inittab 
> > > in a text editor.
> > > 
> > > Look for a line like:
> > > 
> > > c1:12345:respawn:/sbin/getty tty1 38400
> > 
> > This gave me an idea to shrink things even further.  How about 
> > starting GNU's screen utility to launch terminals from init.  It 
> > would bypass the authentication process altogether for a real 
> > minimalistic system, aka DOS.
> > 
> > Something like:
> > 
> > c1:12345:respawn:/usr/bin/screen
> > 
> > But it looks like someone beat me to it (google newsgroup link :)
> > 
> > http://tinyurl.com/w6vw
> > 
> > Bastards!
> 
> You may have heard that I finally got FVWM2 running over 
> XWindows using
> the generic VESA driver for XFree86 v4.3.0.
> 
> Well, it works great...until you exit X.  Then the screen 
> goes blank and
> nothing happens.  Ctrl-Alt-Backspace doesn't do anything so I 
> *think* X
> has stopped, but not certain.  Ctrl-Alt-F7 does nothing 
> either (thats the
> key combination to shell out of X and switch to a different 
> console term,
> right?).  Ctrl-Alt-Del does a graceful reboot, and the 
> console comes back
> up after rebooting, so at least there's a kludgy way out of it.
> 
> I did read something in XFree86 4.3.0 documentation that gave me pause
> about the removal of the excess VCs.  It says that runlevel 4 
> was for an
> X-only system, but doing so without a VC active put the system in load
> state 1 (still haven't learned what that means, but it doesn't sound
> good).  So what runlevel 4 does now in XFree86 4.3.0 is it 
> opens a VC in
> tty6, which is one of the VCs I disabled in /etc/inittab.
> 
> Could the disabling of that VC6 be causing a problem with 
> XFree86 4.3.0? 
> I'm going to try it out later on tonight, but thought I'd get 
> some input
> from others before trying it.
> 
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