Re: shutting down X

[Brian Servis <servis@purdue.edu>]

*- On 26 Sep, Salman Ahmed wrote about "Re: shutting down X"
>>>>>> "Salman" == Salman Ahmed <ssahmed@interlog.com> writes:
> 
>     Salman> Ok. I'll also check RedHat-5.2 to see what /dev/console points
>     Salman> to under there. Then I'll try symlinking it to /dev/tty1 and
>     Salman> see if that solves my problem. BTW, under RH5.2, I am running
>     Salman> kernel 2.2.10 and it doesn't have this `problem'.
> 
> Followup:
> 
> Under RedHat-5.2 (w/kernel 2.2.10), /dev/console is not a symlink to
> any device. It seems to be a `true/pure' device.
> 
> For Debian 2.1, I changed /dev/console to point to /dev/tty1 instead
> of /dev/tty0 and now I get the behaviour I want ie when I shutdown I
> see all the service shutdown/stop messages.
> 
> My questions are :
> 
>     Salman> I am curious to know : what are the ramifications of changing
>     Salman> /dev/console to point to /dev/tty1 instead of /dev/tty0 ?
> 
> and also why /dev/console should be a symlink to some other device ?
> 
> Why not make it a device itself (like RedHat 5.2 has) ?
> 

If you issue 'cd /dev; ./MAKEDEV console' it will create the device
file console.  It will behave in exactly the same way that tty0 does as
specified in the console man page.  Either one will put its output on
the currently active console.  Since tty7 was the last active console
then the output is sent there.

The only ramification of having it symlinked to tty1 is that all system
messages that are destined for console get sent to tty1 regardless of
the current console activity or who is logged into tty1.  I prefer this
since I like to see the shutdown messages when I have to shutdown.

I don't know which kernel RH 5.2 was based on, was it 2.0.x or 2.2.x? 
Apparently the console device was not around in the 2.0.x days, which
Debian 2.1 is based on, so a symlink was used then.  In 2.2.x kernels
it was moved to a device file.  

This code segment is from the MAKEDEV script on my Debian box, notice
how it is makes a symlink for 2.0.x kernels and a device file for 2.2.x
or greater:

        console)
                major=`Major vcs`       # not fatal
                makedev tty0 c 4 0 $cons
                # console
                #       new kernels need a device, old ones a symlink... sigh
                kern_rev1=`uname -r | awk -F'.' '{print $1}'`
                kern_rev2=`uname -r | awk -F'.' '{print $2}'`
                if [ $kern_rev1 -gt 2 ]
                then
                        makedev console c 5 1 $cons
                else
                        if [ $kern_rev1 -eq 2 -a $kern_rev2 -ge 1 ]
                        then
                                makedev console c 5 1 $cons
                        else
                                symlink console tty0
                        fi
                fi

HTH,
-- 
Brian 
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Mechanical Engineering                              servis@purdue.edu
Purdue University                   http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~servis
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