x crashes when I log in and back out of a tty (console, cntrl-alt-F2 thing, whatever)

[My name]

Observed behavior:

When I get an alternate tty, or whatever it's called, with cntrl-alt-FN, where N is any digit, 2-6, inclusive; log in as the same user on the console; do stuff; and then log out with "exit":

I'm suddenly back in tty1 and X has crashed. There is no x on any console. I can start it again with startx.

Expected behavior:

As it does in 14.04, I should just get a login prompt and stay in the same console. X running in tty1 should be unaffected, like x in tty7 would be unaffected in Trusty.

This is 64 bit Xenial with a minimalist Openbox environment, built from the mini.iso. I start X with "startx".

[My name (plmalternate)]

There doesn't seem to be an "edit" button, so I'll add details in comments as I discover them.

In the situation described, the same thing happens if I use the command "logout" instead of "exit".

In the error messages put forth by X (I presume) in tty2 while it was crashing in tty1 because I had just done "logout" in tty2, there was an oddity - it stated the time and date and the date was one day behind but the time was correct. I'm in the +5 zone but I suffer a government of idiots and who insist I "save" daylight by setting my clock wrong. It was nominally 2 pm here, but any way you look at it the date was the same at Greenwich unless I'm sadly confused. Under X the date was and is correct. I've now restarted X in tty1 (where it was to begin with - that's where Xenial puts X, not in tty7 as in days of yore) an logged in again in tty2. I did su (I'm a naughty boy - I enabled su) in tty2 got a root prompt, and then entered the command "exit". It went back to a user prompt and did NOT crash X in tty1. So whether "exit" makes X crash depends on the circumstances. I haven't studied "exit" but apparently if I've logged in as user and do "su", exit merely logs out root on the tty. But if I do "exit" on a tty when I'm logged in as user it seems it does something more and that something more is something X doesn't like. It didn't work that way in Trusty.

Now I'm wondering if this is properly an X bug, as opposed to a bug in whatever "logout" and "exit" call in common. Or maybe in bash itself. I'd appreciate an opinion as to whether I should report this against a different package.

Later, I'll tinker more, and post the log when I find it.

For now, for anyone else annoyed by this, my insecure work-around is simply not to log out of ttys but leave them logged in. This is a security problem if you are in an environment where you lock your kb/mouse/screen with something like xscreensaver or xtrlock in that a logged in tty provides an opportunity for an evil person to shut off your screen locker or just do damage from the command line. Not much of an issue for me at the moment. If this problem leads others to this obvious work-around though, I could argue that it is a security issue. So should this bug be flagged as such?

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to review all reported bugs in a timely manner.

Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) reached end-of-standard-support on April 29, 2021.

I'm setting the status of this bug to 'Incomplete' as it's not seen any activity for some time. Does this bug report have any relevance when using a currently maintained release of Ubuntu? If so, please let us know which one(s) otherwise this bug report can be left to expire in approximately 60 days time.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xorg (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]