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Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 11:46:45 +0100
From: Miquel van Smoorenburg <miquels@cistron.nl>
To: Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>, Kurt Garloff <garloff@suse.de>,
        Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
        Linux kernel list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: TIOCGDEV ioctl
Message-ID: <20001216114645.A8944@cistron.nl>
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In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0012152038560.13037-100000@weyl.math.psu.edu>; from viro@math.psu.edu on Fri, Dec 15, 2000 at 08:54:01PM -0500
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According to Alexander Viro:
> On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> > Please instead do the same thing /dev/tty does, namely a sane interface
> > that shows it as a symlink in /proc (or even in /dev)
> 
> There you go... (/proc/tty/console -> /dev/tty<current_VC>; may very well

The current VT (fg_console) and /dev/console are 2 different things ...
/dev/console might be /dev/ttyS1. Besides to get at fg_console
we already have ioctl(/dev/tty0, TIOCLINUX, 12)

There is currently no way to find out with what device /dev/console
is associated.

Why is that needed? For example, I wrote a program 'bootlogd' that opens
/dev/console and a pty pair, uses TIOCCONS to redirect console
messages to the pty pair so they can be logged. However one would
like to write those messages to the _actual_ console as well, but
there is no way to find out what the real console is.

For this application a ioctl is better than a /proc symlink since
it would be started before /proc is even mounted.

Mike.
-- 
RAND USR 16514
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