X historically has opened the next available virtual terminal, which on a system configured to use 12 virtual consoles has been #13. However, with the upgrade to X 4.3.0, this no longer works. Only by not starting one of the 12 terminals will it start. It will take the option vt13, but has deviated from long practice by not searching for a terminal above 12 on its own.
Hi Joseph, This should be fixed if you remerge xfree-4.3.0-r2 (patch level 1.1.3)
There are two more points that I thought should be addressed, even though they might not qualify as bugs. I don't know the intenet of the XFree86 4.3.0 designers. 1) While the console recognizes LeftALT f1-f12 as vt1-12 and RightALT F1-F12 as vt13-24, X does not. It would be helpful if it did. For example, if an X session is running in DISPLAY=:0 on vt13, and another running on DISPLAT=:1 on vt14, you can't switch between them with RightALT F1 and F2. You have to go back to a console with LeftALT F1 and then back to the other X display with RightALT F2. 2) The background of X is now black by default, but that is an option (-br) to xserver to accomplish this. By having it as the default, it means the standard root weave pattern cannot be obtained. It would be better to use the -br option in startx rather than hard code it.
I'll investigate point 1), but is point 2) really an issue? so far, you're the only person who's taken exception to it (the overwhelming response has been positive)
Seemant: Yes, point #2 is quite minor, but the current behavior does defeat an X option. I don't disagree with the black background looking better, all I noticed was it seemed to be implemented in the wrong place.
http://bugs.xfree86.org//cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=327 filed a report upstream. as for the black background patch -- I'll leave that in for the moment, until I can figure out how to make -br a default in gentoo -- so that it happens with startx and when *dm are started.
since the original problem is solved, I'm closing this report and will keep an eye on the report at xfree's bugzilla.
Your work is appreciated. Thanks.
