[ale] running two X servers

[Jason Day]

On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 10:09:01PM -0500, Geoffrey wrote:
> There was a question at the ALE NW meeting last night regarding running 
> two X servers on one box.  I just verified my own suggestion and thought 
> I'd put it type.

I've been doing this for a while now to run games in wine.  I kept
having various problems when running games in wine: like moving the
mouse to the edge of the screen and inadvertantly switching to a
different virtual desktop.  I also discovered that wine tends to work
better if you set your X resolution to 640x480 or 800x600 and 16-bit
color.  So I did a bit of research and figured out how to start a
different X server.

First, I added this to my XF86Config file:

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "wine"
        Device          "Generic Video Card"
        Monitor         "Generic Monitor"
        DefaultDepth    16

        Subsection "Display"
                Depth 16
                Modes "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubsection
        Subsection "Display"
                Depth 24
                Modes "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubsection
EndSection

Then, for each game, I create a gnome panel launcher with this for a
command:
  xinit /home/jday/bin/game.sh -- :1 -screen wine

The game.sh is a shell script customized for the game I want to play.
For example, I use this script to launch NeverWinter Nights:

#!/bin/bash
xscreensaver-command -display :0 -throttle
cd /win/c/Games/NeverwinterNights/nwn
wine --debugmsg -all nwmain
xscreensaver-command -display :0 -unthrottle

Once the game is goint, I can use C-A-F7 to switch back to my desktop if
I need to.  And when I exit the game, the second X session ends,
returning me to my desktop.  Pretty cool :)
-- 
Jason Day                                       jasonday at
http://jasonday.home.att.net                    worldnet dot att dot net
 
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone is trying to kill me."
    -- Weyoun-6, Star Trek: Deep Space 9
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