ttys not working from xdm

[Trond Endrestøl]

On Thu, 26 Feb 2015 08:42-0500, John Holland wrote:

> I have a new install of 10.1 and I am unable to access ttys from 
> xdm. When I press Alt-F3 or Ctrl-Alt-F3 instead it causes either the 
> mouse, keyboard or entire X session to lock up. Here is the section 
> of my /etc/ttys - any advice on troubleshooting this would be 
> appreciated.
> 
> # If console is marked "insecure", then init will ask for the root password
> # when going to single-user mode.
> console none                            unknown off secure
> #
> ttyv0   "/usr/libexec/getty Pc"         xterm   on  secure
> # Virtual terminals
> ttyv1   "/usr/libexec/getty Pc"         xterm   on  secure
> ttyv2   "/usr/libexec/getty Pc"         xterm   on  secure
> ttyv3   "/usr/libexec/getty Pc"         xterm   on  secure
> ttyv4   "/usr/libexec/getty Pc"         xterm   on  secure
> ttyv5   "/usr/libexec/getty Pc"         xterm   on  secure
> ttyv6   "/usr/libexec/getty Pc"         xterm   on  secure
> ttyv7   "/usr/libexec/getty Pc"         xterm   on  secure
> ttyv8   "/usr/local/bin/xdm -nodaemon"  xterm   on  secure
> # Serial terminals

You are probably missing the VT console in the kernel, set 
kern.vty="vt" in /boot/loader.conf. This should be augmented by KMS 
drivers for your GPU. If you don't have an accelerated GPU like nVidia 
or AMD/ATI, then you're out of luck.

When you press Ctrl+Alt+F3, you are switched to ttyv2, it just doesn't 
show up. You're looking at a ghost image of the X display. You can 
type blindly, but that's not what anyone would want.

Hit Alt+F9 to get back to the X server.

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