[TUHS] Of /dev/tty8

[segaloco via TUHS]

On Monday, March 18th, 2024 at 12:36 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 18 Mar 2024, Ron Natalie wrote:
> 
> > /dev/tty existed in Version 6 for sure. It wasn't the console but
> > rather a magic device that mapped to the processes "controlling
> > terminal."
> 
> 
> I was referring to /dev/tty8, not /dev/tty...
> 
> -- Dave

ttys(V) in the Sixth Edition indicates the first digit of an /etc/ttys entry indicates a terminal line is active on init and the second indicates the final character of the /dev/ttyx entry[1].  Looking at both the Fifth and Sixth Edition /etc/ttys in the archive[2][3], both only have a 1 in the first column of entry 8, corresponding with /dev/tty8.

>From the setup document distributed with the Sixth Edition[4]:

"The same goes for the character devices.
Here the names are arbitrary except that
devices meant to be used
for teletype access should be named
/dev/ttyX, where X is any character.
The files tty8 (console), mem, kmem, null are
already correctly configured."

>From all of this it appears that by convention, tty8 was indeed the default console /dev entry, although this could be changed by editing the conf and ttys entries followed by regeneration of the system.  This would change in the Seventh Edition with the rearrangement of the ttys file to indicate longer /dev entry names and the establishment of a specific /dev/console entry.

- Matt G.

[1] - https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V6/usr/man/man5/ttys.5

[2] - https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V5/etc/ttys

[3] - https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V6/etc/ttys

[4] - https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V6/usr/doc/start/start