On Feb 10,  3:49am, Miles Sabin wrote:
> Subject: xconsole problem
> Hi,
>
> I've got a slight problem with xconsole. If I try to start it up as a
> non-superuser it opens with the message,
>
>   Couldn't open console
>
> tho' as root it works fine. My guess is that the permissions
> on /dev/console are wrong, so could anyone let me know what they ought
> to be?

This behaviour is normal because otherwise J. Random User can steal your
console messages. There are two approaches normally used to deal with this. One
is to get xdm to assign ownership of /dev/console to whoever logs in using the
xdm login. The other is to have a group of trusted users and set the group
read/write bits and chgrp /dev/console to the relevant group. The correct
permissions depend on things like whether you are the only one using the
computer and whether it will ever be networked (including modem - I say this
because some people don't think that a modem is 'real' networking - hence the
large number of breakins to dialup Linux users who fail to set a root
password).

Cheers

Rob Black

PS I am trying to come up with a good way to improve this in the new console
code. Bright ideas on the subject are welcome.