the 'failsafe' session

[Gene C.]

On Thursday 20 January 2005 00:10, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> So, this came up as a sidepoint in another bug.
>
> Say, you're a user, your mouse isn't working. You try and
> log into a failsafe session to fix it.
>
> You're now screwed because:
>
> a) if you start an app, it may not have focus
> b) there's no keysequence to change focus, unless you're an X guru
>
> Is this a situation we really care about? What do we expect
> people to use the failsafe session for, in practice?

My opinion ... we really do not need failsafe as long as there are VTs.  I 
have never used the failsafe graphical login when I have a problem ... I 
login on a VT CLI.

Now if the only tools a user knew how to use were gui tools, then you would 
need failsafe so we should probably keep it.  However, to fix the mouse 
problem you used as an example, the user will probably need to login on a VT 
CLI (or the ultimate CLI -- single user mode).
-- 
Gene