In message <yam9164.2212.142140184@mail.riednet.wh.tu-darmstadt.de>, Christian 
Hattemer writes:
>Hi,
>
>how can I test 1.6.1_RC1 without changing my working 1.6 installation?
>I want to see if the text consoles are now kept healthy when X is running
>(PR 18386). The workaround is to go back to XFree 4.1.0, but this causes
>problems with certain packages from pkgsrc.
>
>I have no unpartitioned space nor a spare drive. But I have enogh space for a
>DOS filedisk inside the Windows partition or perhaps even for a memory disk
>(384 MB RAM available).
>
>How can I install it for testing?

Do you have enough room for another copy of /usr/X11R6 and a new kernel?

From what you say, your problems are almost certainly in either X or 
the kernel.  You can rename /usr/X11R6 to /usr/X11R6-1.6 and create a 
new /usr/X11R6-1.6.1, and symlink /usr/X11R6 to one of the two.  Then 
you can boot a 1.6.1 kernel and test.  To my knowledge, there are no 
incompatiblities between 1.6 userland and 1.6.1 kernels.  (Disclaimer: 
I haven't checked this out.  But my system is a hybrid; I've been 
periodically updating my source and recompiling, especially the kernel.)


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)