Bug 31380

Summary: Why restart X on logging out from Gnome or KDE?
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Alexei Podtelezhnikov <apodtele>
Component: gdmAssignee: Havoc Pennington <hp>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Aaron Brown <abrown>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.1   
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Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2001-03-11 01:11:10 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Alexei Podtelezhnikov 2001-03-10 23:28:01 UTC
From Bugzilla Helper:

Using gdm to login doesn't touch X. Logging out from KDE or Gnome, on the 
contrary, restarts the entire X. I'd assume that this behavior is 
suboptimal and wrong. X is big and should be preserved in memory. This 
causes huge memory stress for the system and the blinking is not very 
healthy for the monitor.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use graphical login
2. Login, then logout...
3. Watch for pid of X...
	
Actual Results:  X gets restarted - its PID changes and the screen is 
blinking.

Expected Results:  Preserve X from restarting and video mode from changing 
back and forth.

Comment 1 Havoc Pennington 2001-03-11 01:44:26 UTC
There's nothing to be gained by keeping X in memory, and no monitor that I know
suffers adverse consequences from swapping video modes (since all PCs do this
every time they're restarted, and many PCs are power-cycled several times a day
for years with no damage to the monitor). The restart lets new logins use a
"clean slate," which may reduce memory usage, probably increases stability a
bit, and keeps users from playing dirty tricks on each other.

Comment 2 Alexei Podtelezhnikov 2001-03-11 05:03:42 UTC
Of all your arguments I only agree with "clean state". As for dirty tricks, 
what could be worse than restarting X on a system with multiple remote X 
terminals? Plus, log out does take a few seconds to comlete even on a modern 
system with Athlon 750 MHz. I suppose 90% of this time is restarting X.

RedHat has two options - graphical and text login. I think they must have a 
meaning besides esthetic one. Text mode should be used to achive "clean state" 
and prevent dirty tricks. Graphical mode should be used when X needs 
uninterrupted execution as on systems with multiple X users.