In <Pine.LNX.4.10.10002110746040.15038-100000@ace.ulyssis.student.kuleuven.ac.be> Chipzz (chipzz@ace.ulyssis.student.kuleuven.ac.be) wrote:
C> On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Khimenko Victor wrote:
>> From: Khimenko Victor <khim@sch57.msk.ru>
>> Subject: Re: [PATCH] devfs v99.11 available
>>
>> In <Pine.LNX.4.10.10002090846040.2414-100000@maxwell.futurevision.com> James Simmons (jsimmons@acsu.buffalo.edu) wrote:
>>
>> >> This is against 2.2.14. Highlights of this release:
>> >>
>> >> - Ported devfs-patch-v99.10 to kernel 2.2.14
>> >>
>> >> - Moved /dev/tty0 to /dev/vc/0
>>
>> > Why did you move tty0 to vc/0 ? The console system will be changing for
>> > 2.5.X. It will become multihead aware which means that we might end up
>> > with /dev/tty representing physical heads and /dev/vty to represent
>> > virtual consoles.
>>
>> There are EXECTLY one tty with devfs now: /dev/tty - current tty for process.
C> Define current?
God knows :-) But every process SHOULD have /dev/tty as current tty for process
("the name of device /dev/tty is alias of terminal name used to log in system"
backword translation from Russian translation). It's outlined in my "The UNIX
Programming Environment" by Kernighan & Pike back from 1984 this way and I bet
used in LOTS AND LOTS of programs. Even if it's not required by POSIX...
C> All you guys are just going on and on about multiple heads, but I have a
C> question too:
C> It's possible to not only have more than 1 monitor, but also more than one
C> keyboard (PS/2 and USB for example). Suppose you have 2 keyboards and two
C> monitors. Now how do you define current?
There are should be configuration file somewhere I think :-)
C> Or am I just completely missing the point here?
Yes and no. There are no natural way to define "current" tty if PROGRAM can
work with more then one monitor and keyboard equally. Unfortunatelly this is
not a choice: programs are NOT ready to work in such environment. Most
programs do not care much about multihead. They just want something as
its terminal (think about things like "crypt"). So /dev/tty should be
defined somehow even with multihead: otherwise LOTS of programs will break.
I'm not know how it'll be done, though. But it will ne done for sure.
/dev/ttyN and friends (including /dev/tty0) on other hand are Linux-specific
(it's usad by programs like XFree86 or GPM) and most should be rewritten for
multihead anyway.
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