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Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 06:15:51 -0500 (EST)
From: Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu>
To: Miquel van Smoorenburg <miquels@cistron.nl>
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
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On Sat, 16 Dec 2000, Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:

> 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.

So mount it... It's not like you didn't have enough privileges for that,
after all, and mount("proc", "/proc", "proc", 0, 0); doesn't look too
complex.

OK, I can see the point of finding out where the console is redirected
to. How about the following:

	/proc/sys/vc -> /dev/tty<n>
	/proc/sys/console -> where the hell did we redirect it or
			     vc if there's no redirect right now
Will that be OK with you?

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