> > sudo /usr/bin/X :1 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:1 -nolisten tcp vt8 -novtswitch
>
> That's going to start an X server running nothing and with no way for
> anything else to connect to it; not very useful.
That would explain the black screens then :-) But how come something
equivalent seems to be running on :0 and doing something useful?
Because it was launched by LightDM, which is managing it by initially displaying a "greeter", then launching a session when someone logs in via the greeter. The other alternative is xinit/startx, which launches a server and then feeds a connection to that server to a script which attaches things to it to make a session.
> It also appears that LightDM documentation is nonexistent.
From the above URL:
Overall, any unknown keyword or unexpected configuration in the
conffile is silently ignored
Hmmm. That's encouraging. Sigh.
Yeh. Personally I'd be removing it and installing gdm or kdm at that point. :/
By 'multiple seats' does he mean that LightDM will run a login screen
on :0 :1 :2 etc.? So I could have my working session on :0 and keep
starting new ones to experiment on :1? But will the display mananager
have to be restarted to pick up changes in desktop files?
It might need to be restarted to find new session definitions, but it shouldn't need to be for changes to existing ones. (Although, "famous last words" --- I generally expect better from the
freedesktop.org folks than something this undocumented.)