bogus tty entry

[Ralph W. Reid]

Lorenzo Prince staggered into view and mumbled:
>
>Just a question, probably unrelated, but does anyone happen to know how I
>can login to more tty's than just 6?  My system will only let me login to
>tty's 1 through 6, and I see over 40 tty's in /dev.  How can I login to
>all these other consoles or are they just there to make newbies like me to
>ask silly questions?  LOL.


I started with 6 tty's here as well, and added 10 more to be able
to run a bunch of stuff all at once (man pages, telnet/ssh to other
systems, distributed.net projects, a screen or two of file editing,
etc.).  Tty1-tty12 are easy to get to quickly by pressing ALT-Fn
where n is the number of a function key--1 through 12.  To reach the
other 4 (tty13-tty16), I usually press ALT-LEFTARROW or
ALT-RIGHTARROW to cycle through the tty's until I get where I want.
Jumping directly to a tty can be accomplished by running `chvt' from
a shell prompt (see the man page for `chvt').  Below is what worked
on my Slackware 8.0 system:

1.  Log on as root to gain access to the necessary programs and
filees.

2.  Load the /etc/inittab file into your favorite editor.

3.  Search for the lines in the file which set up login screens for
tty1-tty6.  I found the following entries in my /etc/inittab file
(note that all of the entries except for tty6 use the same run
levels):

c1:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty1 linux
c2:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty2 linux
c3:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty3 linux
c4:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty4 linux
c5:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty5 linux
c6:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty6 linux

4.  Add additional similarly formatted lines for the additional
tty's.  Be sure to make appropriate changes (c7-c16 and tty7-tty16)
as needed.  Below are the lines I added to give me more tty's:

c7:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty7 linux
c8:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty8 linux
c9:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty9 linux
c10:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty10 linux
c11:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty11 linux
c12:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty12 linux
c13:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty13 linux
c14:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty14 linux
c15:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty15 linux
c16:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty16 linux

5.  Save the /etc/inittab file when the changes are complete.

6.  At the root shell prompt, run `telinit q' to make the changes
active.  If the changes you made are error free, the tty's you added
should be displaying login screens.

Since Speakup is in the kernel, it works fine on all of the tty's I
added (thanks to the Speakup developers for a job well done:)).  See
the man pages for `telinit', 'chvt', and `inittab'.  I hope this
rather wordy message proves helpful.  Have a _great_ day.


-- 
Ralph.  N6BNO.  Wisdom comes from central processing, not from I/O.
rreid at sunset.net  http://personalweb.sunset.net/~rreid
Opinions herein are either mine or they are flame bait.
_PI = 4 * ARCTAN (1)