From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Sep 19 09:55:39 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id JAA29992 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 19 Sep 1996 09:55:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sdev.blaze.net.au (sdev.blaze.net.au [203.17.53.11]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA29841 for ; Thu, 19 Sep 1996 09:55:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (davidn@localhost) by sdev.blaze.net.au (8.7.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id CAA05303; Fri, 20 Sep 1996 02:53:46 GMT Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 02:53:45 +0000 () From: David Nugent To: wOOwOO cc: FreeBSD-questions Mailing List Subject: Re: Adding ttyv? devices. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 19 Sep 1996, wOOwOO wrote: >> > What am I missing here. >> I guess you can't be blamed, because this is really confusing. >> You should do ./MAKEDEV vty4 >> >> Look in MAKEDEV for such things... > >yeah .. the devices were succesfully created, but how to make its active >(pressing alt-f5, alt-f6, etc.) ? > >I tried to add in /etc/ttys > >But got error from kernel ... ttyv? not configured ... [the long answer] Devices (or at least *most* devices - ethernet cards are one exception) require 2 things to work: a) The driver must be enabled in the kernel. Where a driver provides facilities for multiple services (or "devices") the appropriate number must be enabled, - and - b) The device files must exist in /dev (created via MAKEDEV which runs mknod, or by running mknod manually). Your "/dev" (devices) directory is the userland "vector" by which application programs talk to the kernel. If an application wishes to use a device - and in this case, I mean /sbin/init, which opens the vts and starts up getty processes on them - then that application will attempt to open the corresponding file in /dev in order to talk to the running kernel. Now, the kernel must have the device, and the appropriate number of devices configured, for that open() to succeed. [the short answer] /sys/i386/conf/MYKERNEL (your kernel configuration file) has an option that sets the number of console devices allowed for the kernel at runtime. This effective sets the number of vts that *can* become active. option MAXCONS=n (where 'n' is a number) How many *are* active depends on what you put into /etc/ttys. You can activate up to as many vts as the kernel is configured for, but no more. You're no doubt running a kernel with MAXCONS=4 (check with dmesg and/or /var/log/messages for your startup messages to make sure). Hope this helps, David David Nugent, Unique Computing Pty Ltd - Melbourne, Australia Voice +61-3-791-9547 Data/BBS +61-3-792-3507 3:632/348@fidonet davidn@blaze.net.au http://www.blaze.net.au/~davidn