Re: looking for testers of new console

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 09:20:25AM -0400, David Walter wrote:
> But, I had the following error when  trying to scroll back after using
> this for a while.
> 
> console: ../../hurd/console-client/ncursesw.c:462: ncursesw_scroll:
> Assertion 'delta >= 0' failed.
> Aborted.

This is only supposed to happen if you scroll back into the scrollback
buffer.  This is not possible with the ncursesw client because you can not
scroll back, there is no key assigned to it.

The only way this can happen is to start the ncursesw and pc_kbd driver in
one console program and scroll back on the pc_kbd driver.  Is this what you
did?
 
> After I get no response from the keyboard.
> 
> Logging in from another machine and killing  the hanging crash process
> and I get:
> 
> sh-2-05a# kbd queue full
> kbd queue full
> 
> Even pressing the control key gives this message.

Strange.  I don't know where this is coming from, maybe from Mach?
 
> Of course there  is the issue  of some 'lone gun'  walking up  to your
> machine  with the console  running  and c+a+bksp  gaining root  at the
> single   user prompt,  but  I   imagine an   option for  --no-kill  or
> --reboot-on-kill when we get around to security issues?

It's not about security, because you are trying to do the wrong thing (you
remove the wait command).  The console client will be run like xdm or any
other daemon, and the rc script will continue running.  That's why you have
to redirect /dev/console before starting the console client, and change the
/etc/ttys to something to work with that.

I think there should be a wrapper daemon that starts the console client in a
loop, so if you exit it, it will be restarted.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    marcus@gnu.org
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/