Comment 4 for bug 234717

I attach a hack used in conjunction with the comments and code above.

This scriptlet enables 'xlinks2' (links2 -g) to run from a script (in my case normally from bash menus), without X, with directfb, and without using suid root on the links2 binary.

It requires having the user as a member of the group used as above. (Say tty, or video).
In Ubuntu Hardy for some reason the permissions on /dev/tty0 are changed during boot, presumably by configuration changes in some package that I have not identified. A work-around for this is to place this in /etc/rc.local :

chown root:video /dev/tty0 (if the group chosen is 'video')

The script uses a background loop and job control to return the user to the parent menu on quit from xlinks2.