*BSD News Article 92421


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD v. Linux
Date: 31 Mar 1997 14:26:37 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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"Andreas Hinterleitner" <ahinterleitn@bangate.eur.compaq.com> wrote:

> - why /dev/console types everything to ttyv0 (why doesn't Linux do such
> things)? How can I change this behavior?

/dev/console is a logical device that is used by the kernel for
printf's, and by some other system utilities (namely syslogd(8)).
It's also the tty where init(8) (and thus rc(8)) is running on.  All
daemons started during system initialization thusly inherit this tty
for their stdin/stdout/stderr (unless they later close these
descriptors, most of them do so).

/dev/console can be redirected at runtime.  This is how xconsole
works.  Except for the kernel debugger and very few other things (like
the ``hit any key on the console to reboot''), it's only used for
output.

By default, if you're using a graphical display driver (syscons,
pcvt), /dev/console is assigned to /dev/ttyv0.  If you're using a
serial console (since you've configured your bootblocks accordingly,
or since you've been booting with -h), it is assigned to /dev/ttyd0.
It can also be decoupled from any actualy tty, in which case you
simply don't have a console.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)