Hello Joey, > Anyone know why /dev/console is important to gpm or to x in this way? I > don't think it's a bug, I just wanna figure out _why_ this happens..
This is a bug in GPM which i (informally) brought up in connection with support of serial console devices on debian-devel some time ago. GPM needs to access the Virtual Console Master (= /dev/tty0). But since /dev/tty0 was a symlink to /dev/console in the early years of Linux, the author assumed that /dev/console is the VC master. Now it's the other way round /dev/console -> /dev/tty0. That is the reason that this bug goes unnoticed for most of the Debian users. If you happen to use a Serial Console device than GPM won't even start ... The same is true for SVGAlib applications and some of the X-Servers. So the bug is easy to fix: Just substitute /dev/console with /dev/tty0 in the sources. (I have cc-ed this to the package maintainer, because i think he will fix it without a formal bug report :) Cheers, Dominik =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Visit the FAN SITE of the WORLD LEAGUE OF AMERICAN FOOTBALL: <A HREF="http://www.uni-mainz.de/~kubla/WLAF/Welcome.html>HTTP</A> or <A HREF="file:/afs/zdv.uni-mainz.de/homes/UFO/kubla/public_html/WLAF/Welcome.ht ml">AFS file</A> access.
