Description of problem: /etc/X11/prefdm, a shell script and a part of initscripts, used to launch X11 display manager from /etc/inittab, doesn't pass parameters containing spaces to *dm correctly - it splits such parameters using whitespace as a delimiter. This behavious breaks things like: /etc/X11/prefdm -server ":0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X ... Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 7.93.7-1 (i.e., current FC3 update) How reproducible: Run the following by hand, with no xserver running. Observe parameters passed to xdm (gdm, kdm etc.) or, for example, xdm output. Steps to Reproduce: 1. /etc/X11/prefdm -server ":0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X" 2. tail /var/log/xdm-errors Actual results: "xdm error (pid 9491): Missing display type for :0" Xserver doesn't started Expected results: Xserver stdout and/or stderr output, Xserver running OTOH it would be nice if prefdm sends *dm output to a different than /dev/null location. These is a bug report about that open for few years, I think.
Created attachment 112914 [details] This patch to prefdm fixes the "param split" problem.
Added in CVS. It may be in 8.08-1, however, the changes related to early *dm startup may obsolete this fix.