[ltp] Off topic about computer sharing among family

[Allen Knutson]

> On Tue, 6 Apr 2004, Don Perley wrote:
> > The only down side I've seen is that it needs to be running on a graphic 
> > console (whether X or windows).  If the computer needs to  be shared 
> > among family members then in Linux you can't just leave it running and 
> > log off. In XP it can keep running in a swapped out login.
> 
> From: Szakacsits Szabolcs <szaka@sienet.hu>
...> 
> You just need to run two or more X servers (first time I did this, it was
> on a 33 MHz i486 with 8 MB RAM, so quite long ago) I think some distros
> even support this out of the box a user friendly/understandable way today,
> like XP does.

We do this with
	 /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf
; look for
------------------------------------------------------------------
[servers]
# These are the standard servers.  You can add as many you want here
# and they will always be started.  Each line must start with a unique
# number and that will be the display number of that server.  Usually just
# the 0 server is used.
0=Standard
1=Standard
------------------------------------------------------------------
It doesn't work entirely seamlessly -- the two servers migrate around
ctrl-alt-F7, -F8, and -F9 whenever one logs out and the server is
restarted. (Solution: we never log out, just switch X servers.)
Also it's a pain sharing sound; periodically I have to 
	su -c "chmod a+w /dev/dsp*"
which seems particularly inane. Probably I shouldn't have my sound
server set promiscuous, with

% more /etc/esd.conf
[esd]
auto_spawn=1
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 2 -promiscuous
spawn_wait_ms=100

but it was the only thing I could think of.
								Allen K.