Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!emory!km
From: km@mathcs.emory.edu (Ken Mandelberg)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aux
Subject: Console I/O in X on A/UX 1.1
Message-ID: <4167@emory.mathcs.emory.edu>
Date: 22 Jun 89 03:42:12 GMT
Organization: Math & Computer Science, Emory University, Atlanta, GA
Lines: 30

I am having trouble understanding what is going on with console i/o
when running X on A/UX 1.1.

The default X setup does an "xinit xterm -T console -e .x11start  ...."
which starts up one xterm that runs a startup script of other clients.
The "T" just titles the window. Magically on A/UX 1.1, this causes all
/dev/console I/O to go to this xterm's pty apparently including some
old console messages. I don't know why.

On SunOS and a few other BSD style Unix workstations, there is an ioctl
TIOCCONS, that has exactly this effect (without the history of course).
In fact xterm has a documented flag "-C" that exploits this where
available.  On A/UX 1.1, there is no documented TIOCCONS, and the -C
flag is not parsed in xterm (I recall an ifdef TIOCCONS in the
generic xterm source).

So A/UX is doing something else.

The reason this is of interest is in using xdm instead of xinit.  The
sample xdm xsession does not create a console xterm. Since I don't know
how xinit does the console trick, I don't know how to make xdm do it.

I've looked in a few obvious places. There's no reference to a
TIOCCONS type ioctl in the console or termio man pages, or in
any of the X documentation I scanned.
-- 
Ken Mandelberg      | km@mathcs.emory.edu          PREFERRED
Emory University    | {decvax,gatech}!emory!km     UUCP 
Dept of Math and CS | km@emory.bitnet              NON-DOMAIN BITNET  
Atlanta, GA 30322   | Phone: (404) 727-7963