Subject: Getty ports - dumb question

From: Jim Worthington <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 08 Sep 1996 22:59:21 -0400

I did a ps and found these getty ports running:

186   2 S     0:00 /sbin/getty 9600 tty2
187   3 S     0:00 /sbin/getty 9600 tty3
188   4 S     0:00 /sbin/getty 9600 tty4 
189   5 S     0:00 /sbin/getty 9600 tty5 
190   6 S     0:00 /sbin/getty 9600 tty6

I only have 2 serial ports ttyS0 and ttyS1. 
Should these getty ports be running?
How are these ports accessed?  
Are they physical RS-232 ports?

Jim

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From: [email-masked] (Bruce Perens)
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 96 21:47 PDT

[Why do I have gettys running on tty1 through tty6? I only have 2 serial ports]

These are virtual consoles using your VGA card. Push LeftAlt-F2 on your console
(I think it's Control-LeftAlt-F2 or Shift-LeftAlt-F2 if you are running X) and
you will be on tty2. And so on for Alt-F3, through Alt-F6. You can set up
some rediculous number (like 64) of virtual consoles and access them via
various combinations of the left and right alt keys, shift, and the function
keys. By default we only run getty on the first 6.

	Bruce

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 96 10:54:26 cet

I hope its a typo since
 ttyN is not the same as ttySN (N=0,1,....etc)
 e.g., terminals vs. serial lines.

Said that, by default I had more that the really 
existing serial lines (ttySN) configured
To fix that edit the file you'll get after

# find /etc | xargs grep tty

I remember editing that file as recommended in it. 
Bruce: That could be part of the installation process in 
Debian 1.2 maybe.

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Getty ports - dumb  question
Author:  [email-masked] at cclink
Date:    09.09.96 10:02

Jim

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From: Jim Worthington <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 1996 09:45:56 -0400

Bill Roman wrote:
> 
> They're running on your virtual consoles.  Try holding down the left Alt
> key and pressing function keys.  Log in on each virtual console.  Pretty
> slick, eh?
> 
> I used this feature a lot when I had only 4 MB of RAM, as that's not
> enough to run X in (unless you like watching the disk light a lot).
> Now I usually just open all the xterms I need.
> 

Thanks to everynody that responded.  I wish I would have known about
this feature when I was trying to get X to run.  Now that I have X
running, multiple xterms do indeed do the job.

Jim