CODEWITHSUNDEEP
x11
Aaron
Aaron

Reputation: 11

Create Virtual X session

Is there a way to create multiple X sessions on a machine (not using VNC)? I'm looking to create a virtual or secondary X session that has multiple displays and monitors as defined by my xorg.conf.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2205

Answers (1)

user2404501
user2404501

Reputation:

At the lowest level, starting a second X server is as simple as launching the X program with a display name as an argument. Your first one will have the display name :0 so to avoid conflicting with it:

X :1

(you'd want to do that from a text console, not from inside an existing X session).

It will start itself on the next available VT, so if you switch to your first X server with Alt+F7, the second one will be reachable with Alt+F8.

That will just be a server though, nothing will be running on it so it'll be a blank screen with a mouse cursor. You can direct programs to run on it with the DISPLAY environment variable. Starting a window manager should be enough to get you a usable session:

DISPLAY=:1 twm &

If you're not interested in the low-level stuff and you want something more like your normal login session, you can try the startx tool. It takes server options after a -- so you can run

startx -- :1 &

If you want a second X server to start at boot time and show a login screen, add it to your xdm (or other *dm) configuration. For xdm, this would be /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers

Upvotes: 1

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