Bernd Sieker <bsieker@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> wrote:
>
> Running mismatched kernel and userland is generally a Bad Thing.
>
Thanks for your response.

I know this is definitely the case for running an older kernel and newer
userland.  But in general, I've found running a *newer* kernel with older
userland to be quite OK (apart from some userland programs like "ps",
"netstat", et al that like to dig deeply into kernel data structures).

Usually I think the only way that what I did should fail is if the backward
compatibility that the developers have put in to support older binaries
has bugs.

In this case though, there seems to be another way not doing a full
1.4_BETA install can fail ... :-(

Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU> said

> I saw something very like this with 1.4_ALPHA or _BETA, when I
> installed `by hand'.  My problem was having ttyE? on in
> /etc/ttys,  as well as /dev/console.
> ...
> What to have in /etc/ttys depends on which, if any, of dev/ttyE[1-3]
> you've configured on in /etc/rc.wscons. (By default, only ttyE0 is on
> in a GENERIC kernel; if you want more you have to configure them.)

Well, I had /dev/console turned off so that wasn't the problem, but
it did point me in the right direction.

Because I hadn't done a full 1.4_BETA install I didn't have the new
configuration stuff for wscons virtual consoles so I guess I only had
the one console (ttyE0) active.  I had a getty running on ttyE0 and I
was assuming that the X server would pick the next free console.
But I assume because there was only one active console it picked
ttyE0 as well :-(

I don't know if this is "mkb@altair.mayn.de"'s problem but I haven't
had any keyboard lockups since I turned off the getty on ttyE0.

I guess when I get 1.4 properly installed I should look at enabling
more than one virtual console.

Duncan