/dev/console - Kernel upgrades from 2.0 to 2.2
I was learning (a little) about tty devices, and learned, from
`potato' MAKEDEV and the kernel sources, that in 2.0 kernels,
/dev/console -> /dev/tty0, but in 2.2, /dev/console should be node
5,1.
I've been running 2.2 for some time... but until yesterday, my
/dev/console was still a symlink to /dev/tty0. I removed it and ran
`MAKEDEV console', and now it is corrected.
What's up with this? Why wasn't that done for me when I upgraded my
kernel? Answering my own question... I didn't use the Debian kernel
package to upgrade; so even if it does fix those devices, it wouldn't
have been done on my machine.
/dev/tty0 and /dev/console have different major device numbers.
/dev/tty and /dev/console are both major 5.
/dev/tty is the controlling terminal of the current process. I am
not sure, but I think that if a process does not have a controlling
terminal, that /dev/tty and /dev/console are the same thing... Is
that true?
/dev/console is always the foreground Linux text console?
What is /dev/tty0 now?
The manual pages for this stuff are out of date. They do not explain
very much about these devices. The only real source of documentation
is the kernel source itself; reading that is a major undertaking.
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