source: trunk/athena/etc/dm/dm.8 @ 13729

Revision 13729, 2.8 KB checked in by kcr, 25 years ago (diff)
Formerly athena/etc/xdm/dm/dm.[8c] autoconfiscate, and aesthetically reorder #includes
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1.\" $Id: dm.8,v 1.1 1999-10-14 22:18:55 kcr Exp $
2.TH DM 8 "30 April 1994"
3.ds ]W MIT Project Athena
4.SH NAME
5dm \- X display manager
6.SH SYNOPSIS
7dm \fIconfigfile logintty\fR [-noconsole] \fIconsoletty\fR
8.SH DESCRIPTION
9
10\fIDm\fR is intended to be run by \fIinit\fR to startup the X server,
11the X console, and X login.  It will read out of the specified config
12file the command lines for these three processes. 
13.PP
14This file consists of lines containing the program name, whitespace,
15and the commandline for the program.  The program names recognized are
16\fBdm\fB, \fBX\fR, \fBconsole\fR, \fBlogin\fR, and \fBttylogin\fR.
17Everything from a hash mark to the end-of-line will be ignored as a
18comment.  \fIDm\fR recognizes one command line option from this file,
19-display. If it is not specified, \fIdm\fR will default to :0.
20.PP
21The X server will be started first, using the SIGUSR1 handshake
22present in X11R4.  \fIDm\fR will keep a connection open to prevent the
23X server from inadvertently resetting should the user at some point
24have closed all X connections temporarily.  Next the console will be
25started, reading from the master side of the pseudo-tty specified as
26the \fIlogintty\fR.  If \fIlogintty\fR is already in use, another
27pseudo-tty will be chosen.  Then the login will be started, with stdin
28set to \fI/dev/null\fR and stdout and stderr set to \fIlogintty\fR.
29The display manager then waits for a change in the status of its
30children or a signal to arrive.  If the display manager encounters
31errors while starting up, it will initiate a console login.
32.PP
33If the console exits, another one will be started.  If the X server or
34xlogin exit, the display manager will clean up and exit.  This
35includes a call to \fIal_acct_revert(3)\fR to clean up the user's login
36session if necessary.  If xlogin exits with status 2, it is requesting
37that a raw console login be started.  If the display manager receives
38SIGFPE, it will kill its children and sleep forever (this is a way to
39shutdown the display during updates).
40.PP
41If the \fB-noconsole\fR switch is given, it will not redirect system
42console output to the console process.  This is necessary if more than
43one display manager is running on a machine.
44.SH FILES
45/etc/utmp, /usr/adm/wtmp, /etc/passwd, /etc/ptmp, /etc/X*.hosts,
46/var/athena/X*.pid, /var/athena/console.pid, /var/athena/dm.pid, /dev/mouse,
47/dev/cons, /var/athena/console.log, /dev/console
48
49.SH "SEE ALSO"
50Xserver(1), console(8), xlogin(8), config_console(1), init(8),
51al_acct_revert(3)
52
53.SH AUTHOR
54Mark Rosenstein, MIT Project Athena
55.br
56Copyright (c) 1990 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
57
58.SH BUGS
59Sometimes the console does not revert back to the real console when a
60console login is requested.
61
62Sometimes it is necessary to press SHIFT, CONTROL, and/or META before
63keys work normally when a console login is requested.
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