Mostly successful with Backstreet Ruby but lost VT1

[Sam <ukh...@sn...>]

Hi all,

I just spent the whole day getting Backstreet Ruby working on my system,
mostly successfully.  I'll report my experience then ask for help
regaining my virtual terminal #1 (or virtual console; I'm not clear on
the terminology.  I mean the thing I used to get when I pressed
Ctrl-Alt-F1).

I'm running Debian Woody and my project is a digital picture frame
(read: "unwanted flat panel display gotten for cheap") near my
computer.  The display is now in a nice wooden frame, hanging on the
wall, so it doesn't look like a computer screen, and it's attached to my
PC by a 15' VGA cable to a cheap PCI GeForce2.  When I boot my computer
the picture frame display comes up with its own X server then one of my
digital photographs is chosen at random and displayed.  It's totally
independent of gdm and whether I'm logged in or not (thank you,
Backstreet Ruby).

I followed the directions in the XFree Local Multi-User HOWTO, which was
very helpful.  Thank you, Svetoslav Slavtchev.

I first tried using Andreas Schuldei's binary kernel package
(kernel-image-2.4.20-backstreet-ruby-p4_10.00.Custom_i386.deb) but when
I booted up my PS/2 keyboard didn't work.  I then tried to patch a
Debian 2.4.21 kernel but the patch failed, so I downloaded a vanilla
2.4.21 kernel which patched successfully.  When configuring the kernel I
tried to set "Input Devices/Keyboards/AT keyboard support" to Y so I
wouldn't have to deal with loading the module (as recommended by the
instructions).  The kernel configurator wouldn't let me; it insisted on
it being set to 'M'.  I tried booting this kernel and it failed in the
same way (no keyboard).  I then reconfigured the kernel and turned on
"Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers".  Once that was
on I was allowed to set "AT keyboard support" to 'Y' instead of 'M'. 
Booting the patched kernel now works with my keyboard.  I have to add
"dumbcon=1" to my kernel command line (maybe because I've got only one
keyboard plugged in).

I've got an AGP GeForce3 and a PCI GeForce2 in my system and I'm using
nVidia's binary drivers.  I first tried the kernel-only solution but my
system crashed with bizarre patterns on my screens.  Fine, so I switched
to Andreas Schuldei's binaries for the patched XFree86 3.0 and these
worked, but only if I probe my GeForce2 first, i.e.:

        /usr/X11R6/bin/X -probeonly -layout Small
        /usr/X11R6/bin/X :1 -layout Small -prefbusid 2:7:0 vt8 &
        
after which I load gdm, which starts the other X server on the AGP
card.  It seems odd that I have to probe the PCI card right before
starting the PCI card (this isn't about which card comes first), but
that's what worked.

I made some small changes to a program called "qiv" to behave itself
better when it displays the photograph (such as hiding the mouse
pointer).  Yay, open source!

Here's the part where I need help.  Now when I press Ctrl-Alt-F1, the
main display switches back to the text-only console BUT it's "greyed
out"!  Both the foreground text and background look grey--the text is
darker than it should be and the background is lighter.  I can read text
on it but I cannot type anything to it.  This alarms me because I like
dropping out of X once and a while and getting a command line.  Any
ideas?

During my experimenting I did try having gdm launch both X servers as
explained in the HOWTO.  When I did this, instead of launching one
myself, I was able to use VT1 but suffered the garbage font problem. 
Typing "consolechars -d" fixed it immediately.  I don't care about this,
because I don't want gdm to launch both servers, but I'm noting it
because I didn't have the "greyed-out" VT1 problem in that setup.

A big thanks to those people who write the code and documentation which
makes this possible.

Sam