KDM opens at 7th virtual console despite of configuration.

[LStranger]

I'm not sure what package it belongs to. In ubuntu 9.10 all worked OK but as soon I upgraded to 11.10 KDM on boot ignores any of settings about VT and opens on /dev/tty7. I need to have :0 on VT10 and :1 on VT9 and it was so on 9.10 as I said and now I cannot get it after reboot but if I exec 'service kdm restart' it works as it should be though. Yes, I don't reboot it often but even as one time action it's annoyance as I don't like self-will in system while it should work as configured.

$ grep VT /etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc | grep -v '^#'
ServerVTs=-10,-9
ServerVT=10
ServerVT=9

P.S. It seems I start to dislike upgrades as new middleware gets worse and worse.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

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[LStranger (andrej-rep)]

I have not filed this about specific package because I'm not sure what exactly package makes it wrong. I suspect upstart it is but probably some other influences too. As I've mentioned above that happens only on boot and after boot was completed there is no unexpected behavior anymore, I've checked it few times. If you need some additional info then feel free to ask. Thank you.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

upstart has nothing to do with this. If kdm isn't respecting your requests for a VT, I don't see how that can be anything but a kdm bug.

[LStranger (andrej-rep)]

You are wrong, it respects - just run a command:

service kdm restart

and kdm runs exactly on VT which was requested so it cannot be a kdm bug. If it's not upstart who enforce kdm to run on vt7 then assign the bug on right package.

[LStranger (andrej-rep)]

Also you know that even diagnostic messages go on vt7 now instead of usual vt1 - some middleware enforces them to vt7, the same happens with kdm as well. I suspected upstart and you say I'm wrong. Unfortunately I don't know what tool may do that enforcement.

[mkfs (oroboros)]

I agree with LStranger, it is changes like this that make me sour on the Ubuntus. Change the default display manager, sure, change the default VTY, fine, but don't reduce configurability with each release -- if I wanted a *NIX like that I'd be running OS X.

Complaining aside, this appears to be a problem with the integration of Plymouth.

Grub has the vt.handoff parameter which allows the user to specify which virtual console the bootsplash and such are expected to run on. The plymouthd program takes a --tty option that allows it to run on a virtual console specified by the user.

The Plymouth upstart job in /etc/init/plymouth.conf allows the tty parameter to be set (e.g. --tty /dev/vcs9), but according to the header of the file (and to the results of experimentation) this conf file is not used at boot -- Plymouth is started from initramfs.

This means that it might be possible to change the VTY by rebuilding the initrd, but I haven't tried that (yet ... waiting for the next XOrg Intel video driver crash, which happens about every 10 days).

In regards to KDM, it has a config file which allows it to be run on a specified virtual console -- but these options are ignored if Plymouth passes it a virtual console to open on (I forget the mechanism -- has_vty or somesuch).

Suggestions for fixing:

a) A configuration file for plymouth that is used in the initrd and allows options to plymouthd to be set

b) Have initrd respect the vt.handoff option instead of hard-coding the virtual terminal

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[LStranger (andrej-rep)]

Will this bug ever be fixed? I got tired to login into text console and run 'sudo service kdm restart' after each boot.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package kde-workspace - 4:4.9.95-0ubuntu1

---------------
kde-workspace (4:4.9.95-0ubuntu1) raring; urgency=low

  [ Jonathan Riddell ]
  * New upstream RC release

  [ Harald Sitter ]
  * Drop kubuntu_kdm_plymouth_transition.diff as discussed on the mailing
    list. Since we do not use KDM by default anymore and since the patch
    introduces issues that are not present with a vanilla KDM.
    LP: #886946, #578732, #553567
  * Update kdm.upstart script to quit-wait-sleep on plymouth regardless of
    the runlevel.

  [ Rohan Garg ]
  * Update install files
 -- Jonathan Riddell <email address hidden> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:22:32 +0000