Re: rxvt

["Jens B. Jorgensen" <jjorgens@bdsinc.com>]

Each rxvt (or xterm or ???term) uses a pseudo-tty, so using a different term won't
help you. By default there are 64 of them but you can make more. They are also used
for telnet sessions and basically any shell session not occuring on some other type of
tty (virtual console, serial port). You can make 16 more with:

/dev/MAKEDEV ptyt ttyt

and after that you can make 16 more with

/dev/MAKEDEV ptyt ttyt

You see, for each pseudo-tty (say: puh-suede-oh, it's so much nicer) there are two
device files,

/dev/pty<x>
/dev/tty<x>

where <x> generally has two characters, the first being a letter and the second being
a hex digit if you will. This naming scheme is arbitrary really. When the xterm runs
it starts trying to find an pseudo-tty by simply trying to open them. It starts with
/dev/ptyp0, then /dev/ptyp1 ... /dev/ptypf /dev/ptyq0 ... and so on until it succeeds.
On my system (and I suspect this is default on most machines) the sequence stops with
/dev/ptysf. It may be that the kernel can only deal with 64. A cursory glance through
the kernel source on my box indicates you can have up to 256 so you should be ok.

BTW, you're really do start a lot of rxvt's, huh?

Michael Symalla wrote:

> Dear Debian-Experts,
>
> i have changed all my xterms against rxvt because it looks nicer with
> the scrollbar and the colours (for example in pdmenu). But when I have
> opened to much rxvt's I can't open anymore, the only message I recieve
> is
>
> rxvt: can't open pseudo-tty
> rxvt: aborting
>
> So, how can I change this or does anyone know a good xterm replacement
> with the properties mentioned above?

--
Jens B. Jorgensen
jjorgens@bdsinc.com