Subject basically says it all... I can't discern a difference between
starting "sudo X -novtswitch :1" and just "sudo X :1" - the newly
started server's vt is always activated, whether starting it from
console or from an xterm within another server. My understanding is that
-novtswitch should prevent that.

tag 466064 upstream
found 466064 2:1.7.7-11
found 466064 2:1.9.3.901-1
thanks

Hi Thomas,

Thomas Themel <themel@iwoars.net> (16/02/2008):
handling. It would be nice to have some documentation clarifying the
behaviour one should expect with those options (that is, with:
-keeptty/-novtswitch/-sharevts).

A possible workaround, assuming:
 - that your sudo time stamp is still valid,
 - that your X starts in 5 seconds max (might be insufficient on old
   machines),
 - that you're on vt1.

→  X $your_options & sleep 5 ; sudo chvt 1

Meaning start X in background, sleep 5 seconds, and move back to vt1.

KiBi.

found 466064 2:1.20.11-1+deb11u1
quit

I almost wonder whether I'm seeing a distinct bug since #466064 is so
old.  -novtswitch continues(?) to be problematic.  Current version the
option doesn't work.

Not switching VTs is rather valuable for having multiple X-servers
started by init and running on distinct VTs.  Combined with VMs all sorts
of interesting things become possible.

Having a broken -novtswitch option causes all sorts of trouble for such a
setup.