Re: New /dev/console and /dev/tty0
Geert Uytterhoeven (Geert.Uytterhoeven@cs.kuleuven.ac.be)
Tue, 29 Apr 1997 17:10:57 +0200 (MET DST)
On 29 Apr 1997, Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:
>In article <yw04tcqf4ya.fsf@laurel.trs.ntc.nokia.com>,
>Kohtala Marko <Marko.Kohtala@ntc.nokia.com> wrote:
>>Geert Uytterhoeven <Geert.Uytterhoeven@cs.kuleuven.ac.be> writes:
>>
>>> In summary, while we created an `automatic' /dev/console, we lost the ability
>>> to access the current virtual console (formerly /dev/tty0), or am I missing
>>> something??
>>
>>When I wrote the change, my thought was that /dev/console would
>>continue to work as before (it already was automatic) when there are
>>the virtual terminal devices. However, I failed to bring this thought
>>into the code.
>
>Hmm. This was originally part of my first serial console code.
>I had an automatic console device with major/minor 4/255, a new one.
>The old /dev/tty0 remained master virtual console device.
>However Linus didn't like that at all so I removed it.
>
>The solution I made was that the kernel would set an environment variable
>called CONSOLE to the (guessed, ofcourse) name of the console device.
>Init looks at this environment variable to decide which console to
>open for boot. The first script that is spawned by init can link the
>real console device to /dev/console after remounting the root fs rw.
>
>This actually works very nice, better then I thought and looking back
>Linus was right as usual :).
Yep, $CONSOLE worked fine.
>>Now, when we have no /dev/tty[1-9]* devices, I thought that best is to
>>have /dev/console go automatically to any existing console device. The
>>c 4 0 is pairs nicely with c 5 0, which is the tty of the current
>>process, so I thought I keep using that.
>
>However we need a /dev/tty0. The debian distribution has already changed
>all code (svgalib, X server) to use /dev/tty0 instead of /dev/console.
>That's the way to go IMO.
It will probably be in the next XFree release too.
Greetings,
Geert
--
Geert Uytterhoeven Geert.Uytterhoeven@cs.kuleuven.ac.be
Wavelets, Linux/m68k on Amiga http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~geert/
Department of Computer Science -- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven -- Belgium