Bug 785507

See http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-245692.html

I found this:

static void
server_add_xserver_args (GdmServer *server,
int *argc,
char ***argv)
{
int count;
char **args;
int len;
int i;

len = *argc;
g_shell_parse_argv (server->priv->session_args, &count, &args, NULL);
*argv = g_renew (char *, *argv, len + count + 1);

for (i=0; i < count;i++) {
*argv[len++] = g_strdup (args[i]);
}

*argc += count;

argv[len] = NULL;
g_strfreev (args);
}

And this:


static void
gdm_server_init (GdmServer *server)
{

server->priv = GDM_SERVER_GET_PRIVATE (server);

server->priv->pid = -1;
server->priv->command = g_strdup (X_SERVER " -br -verbose");
server->priv->log_dir = g_strdup (LOGDIR);

add_ready_handler (server);
}

Not Fedora-specific, I am running openSUSE 12.1 and I see the same.

The change happened in upstream commit 04b17101b93d7b34561043d36eeab26c7eb10036:

Author: Ray Strode <rstrode>
Date:   Tue May 24 21:33:55 2011 -0400

    daemon: Up verbosity of X logging

    This makes things a little easier for debugging problems.

IMHO this was simply wrong and should be reverted. If you want more verbose Xorg logs for debugging, then please add a way to configure the verbosity level at run-time. Hard-coding it is wrong.

Depending on the Xorg drivers in use, the rate of debug log messages can get very high. For example, the radeon driver is spitting about 7300 lines (2 debug messages repeating over and over) per 24 hours on my machine. This is making the Xorg.0.log file almost useless (I wouldn't even notice is a real warning is ever written to that file) and causes unnecessary I/O.

Why isn't this configurable?

This would be ideal, I agree. Meanwhile a fix was committed upstream to only start X in verbose mode if gdm itself is started in debug mode. This is good enough as far as I am concerned.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=670694

It is indeed not the most perfect independently configurable solution but it looks very usable to me. Thanks!
Please release an update to Xorg with this patch.

Actually it's gdm that needs to be updated, not Xorg.

Ehm, yes, you are right. Please go ahead and release an update!

the problem is still there:

[root@oder libexec]# rpm -qf /usr/libexec/gdm-simple-slave
gdm-3.4.1-3.fc17.x86_64

[root@oder libexec]# uname -a
Linux oder 3.6.9-2.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Dec 4 13:26:04 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[root@oder libexec]# strings /usr/libexec/gdm-simple-slave | grep Xorg
/usr/bin/Xorg -br -verbose%s
/usr/bin/Xorg -background none -logverbose 7

The talkative Xorg/nvidia driver created a root File system full with 9 GB of Xorg.log

'my fix': ghex /usr/libexec/gdm-simple-slave
and search for 'logverbose' and change '0x37' to '0x33'.
(I'd prefer using 'vi gdm-simple-slave.conf' ;-))

we only pass -logverbose 7 if Enable=true in the [debug] section of /etc/gdm/custom.conf these days.

[root@oder ~]# cat /etc/gdm/custom.conf 
# GDM configuration storage

[daemon]

[security]

[xdmcp]

[greeter]

[chooser]

[debug]

[root@oder ~]# rpm -qf /etc/gdm/custom.conf 
gdm-3.4.1-3.fc17.x86_64

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