OS 12.3 can't switch ttys after killing GUI

English Applications
1

Hello everyone!

I’ve installed openSuse 12.3 with Gnome 3.6.2 as a guest OS under VirtualBox on my Ubuntu 14.04 host.

I have a little pesky problem where after killing GUI

sudo /sbin/telinit 3

from a console tty (say 1), after going back to tty7 (to check it), I get stuck there and can’t switch back to any other of the ttys1-6. The only thing to do is to power off the machine.

The video below shows pretty much what I’m writing about:
[video]https://vid.me/e/Ea4k[/video]

What I see is that telinit 3 fails to kill gnome-related processes and I don’t know why. And this make me believe it’s an issue related to my openSuse installation, rather than the fact that it is installed as guest under VirtualBox. I also have other Linux guests installed(a CentOS 4.8 and a Debian 5) and for those making the equivalent operations works fine.

Anybody got an idea about how I can solve this?

Thank you!

2

I’m not really on your level of linux expertise but
why are you starting gdm from runlevel 3, switch to runlevel 5 first

ps. OpenSuse 12.3 has been dead for some time now there are probobly bugs that wore not fixed, if you want to play with an OpenSUSE stable version go with 13.2 or 13.1

3

Switch terminals with ctrl-alt-FX where X is the terminal number

4

ok…thanks for the pun…:slight_smile:

why are you starting gdm from runlevel 3, switch to runlevel 5 first

I actually start the machine in Desktop mode (like in the video).

ps. OpenSuse 12.3 has been dead for some time now there are probobly bugs that wore not fixed, if you want to play with an OpenSUSE stable version go with 13.2 or 13.1

Well, I know, but for the particular reason of going through some linux basic tutorial that asks me for openSuse 12.3 to work with, I have installed it. And since it was a stable version I was thinking that maybe this issue may have been discovered and possibly solved.

This is precisely what my problem is: Ctrl-Alt-F(1-6) doesn’t work after switching to a killed GUI tty(Ctrl-Alt-F7)

5

I understand that, but not very many people will try to go to a virtual tty which the knowledge that does not exist in the first place (so far for your hope that it is discovered earlier).

And while you might be correct in thinking that playing with 12.3 in a virtual machine is a nice thing to do, when it comes to problems like this one, not many people have still a 12.3 available to try to re-create your problem themselves.

6

On 2015-06-06 17:06, dagniel wrote:

>> ps. OpenSuse 12.3 has been dead for some time now there are probobly
>> bugs that wore not fixed, if you want to play with an OpenSUSE stable
>> version go with 13.2 or 13.1
> Well, I know, but for the particular reason of going through some linux
> basic tutorial that asks me for openSuse 12.3 to work with, I have
> installed it.

Ok…

> And since it was a stable version I was thinking that
> maybe this issue may have been discovered and possibly solved.

Maybe it was, if it was an issue, if you installed all updates (su - ;
zypper patch).

> gogalthorp;2713854 Wrote:
>> Switch terminals with ctrl-alt-FX where X is the terminal number
> This is precisely what my problem is: Ctrl-Alt-F(1-6) doesn’t work after
> switching to a killed GUI tty(Ctrl-Alt-F7)

The correct sequence to kill graphics mode in openSUSE is:


su -
init 3

And going to the 7th terminal after graphics mode has been killed, and
back, has worked as far as I remember, but I have never tried under
virtualbox. Under vmware player, those keys sometimes are problematic:
instead of going to the guest they go to the host.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))

7

@dagniel

ok…thanks for the pun…:slight_smile:

No man I was being serious I’ve never had a course or even read a book about Linux, all I’ve ever done is downloaded, installed and played with it, if I had an issue I used a web search.
I was watching your video and I saw that you tried running gdm under init 3, that’s why I said try switching to 5 first.
But as you are running under a virtual machine it is possible that the key combination ctrl+alt+F(x) is not send to the guest operating system but intercepted by the host application, those key combinations do work with real hardware, from the video it does seam that you are running a nonstandard kernel and that it has some time issues.

8

I actually hadn’t checked that and found that there were a LOT of patches to install (~370). It even contained a different kernel version which is a bit odd…I must have gotten a “non-final” version of the openSuse 12.3 …completely unexpected for me.
Anyway I’ve installed all the patches (had to do a repartition along the way since I made a 100MB /boot partition…yeah:) ), but the situation is exactly the same.

The correct sequence to kill graphics mode in openSUSE is:

su -
init 3

And going to the 7th terminal after graphics mode has been killed, and
back, has worked as far as I remember, but I have never tried under
virtualbox. Under vmware player, those keys sometimes are problematic:
instead of going to the guest they go to the host.

Under VBox, there’s a configurable host key that sends the “Ctrl+Alt” to the guest machine. So the action of switching through ttys is virtually the same. This is not at all random/confusing. It works.

I don’t know the details, but for me both

sudo /sbin/telinit 3

and

sudo /sbin/init 3

change to runlevel 3 on my machine. But they both fail to stop the gnome processes.


ps -Alwf | grep gdm

4 S root      2439     1  0  80   0 -  9493 ?      17:59 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/gdm/gdm-simple-slave --display-id /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Displays/_0
4 S root      2444  2439 10  80   0 - 39328 ?      17:59 tty7     00:00:15 /usr/bin/Xorg :0 -background none -verbose -auth /run/gdm/auth-for-gdm-Lm2UcO/database -seat seat0 -nolisten tcp vt7
4 S root      2616  2439  0  80   0 -  7165 ?      17:59 ?        00:00:00 gdm-session-worker [pam/gdm-password]
0 S dan       3177  2180  0  80   0 -  1063 pipe_w 18:01 tty1     00:00:00 grep --color=auto gdm

 ps -Alwf | grep gnome

4 S root      2439     1  0  80   0 -  9493 ?      17:59 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/gdm/gdm-simple-slave --display-id /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Displays/_0
1 S dan       2620     1  0  80   0 - 15727 -      17:59 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon --daemonize --login
4 S dan       2623  2616  0  80   0 - 18058 -      17:59 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/gnome-session
0 S dan       2738     1  0  80   0 -  4328 -      17:59 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/at-spi2/at-spi2-registryd --use-gnome-session
0 S dan       2759  2623  0  80   0 - 40536 -      17:59 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/gnome-settings-daemon
0 S dan       2807  2623  9  80   0 - 144633 -     17:59 ?        00:00:16 /usr/bin/gnome-shell
0 S dan       2813     1  0  80   0 - 18026 -      17:59 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/gsd-printer
0 S dan       2933     1  0  80   0 - 13444 -      17:59 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-calendar-server
0 S dan       3184  2180  0  80   0 -  1063 pipe_w 18:02 tty1     00:00:00 grep --color=auto gnome

After closely looking at the processes, the gdm processes, while in graphic mode, look like this

4 S root      **2437**     1  0  80   0 -  6705 ?      18:41 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/gdm
4 S root      2439  **2437**  0  80   0 -  9493 ?      18:41 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/gdm/gdm-simple-slave --display-id /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Displays/_0
4 S root      2444  2439 14  80   0 - 41776 ?      18:41 tty7     00:00:03 /usr/bin/Xorg :0 -background none -verbose -auth /run/gdm/auth-for-gdm-QRAwiz/database -seat seat0 -nolisten tcp vt7
4 S root     2616  2439  0  80   0 -  7165 ?      18:41 ?        00:00:00 gdm-session-worker [pam/gdm-password]
0 S dan      10567 10543  0  80   0 -  1063 pipe_w 18:41 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto gdm

so the parent for /usr/lib/gdm/gdm-simple-slave is /usr/sbin/gdm. So telinit 3 kills the /usr/sbin/gdm process, but not the child and its children

I’ve found that killing the /usr/lib/gdm/gdm-simple-slave process after going to runlevel 3, so in this case

sudo kill 2439

also teminates the gnome processes and solves my problem. I can switch between virtual consoles after checking the graphical one.

Thanks all for your input!

9

On 2015-06-07 18:16, dagniel wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2713905 Wrote:
>>
>> Maybe it was, if it was an issue, if you installed all updates (su - ;
>> zypper patch).
> I actually hadn’t checked that and found that there were a LOT of
> patches to install (~370). It even contained a different kernel version
> which is a bit odd…I must have gotten a “non-final” version of the
> openSuse 12.3 …completely unexpected for me.

Absolutely normal and expected. 370 patches are to few looking to me.

The ISO image is the same one from release day till the day 12.3 stops
being supported. Updates and kernels are provided via Internet.

> change to runlevel 3 on my machine. But they both fail to stop the gnome
> processes.

I know that some user processes do not die. You should log out of the
user session first, then issue the “init 3” from a terminal. Some
processes might still not die, I have a script somewhere to kill them,
manually. But this has never stopped the switching of terminals to work,
at least for me.

> also teminates the gnome processes and solves my problem. I can switch
> between virtual consoles after checking the graphical one.

Good :slight_smile:

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))