Even though I increased the amount of pts(4) entries in /etc/ttys some
time ago, I didn't realize back then those entries shouldn't have been
there in the first place.
I just looked at the getttyent() source code and it turns out when you
call setttyent(), it walks through /dev/pts and looks for the device
with the highest number. After you receive EOF's from getttyent(), it
makes up entries for pts(4) devices.
This means that adding entries for pts(4) is somewhat harmful, because
if you now traverse the list, you get redundant entries, so just remove
them.
As discussed with Robert Watson on the src-committers list, it is safer
to keep at least some pty(4) entries in /etc/ttys, for applications that
roll their own PTY allocation routine and only search for BSD-style
PTY's.
This means we've now just toggled the amount of entries for pts(4) and
pty(4).
Requested by: rwatson
Because we now use pts(4)-style PTY's exclusively, there is no use for
these entries in /etc/ttys. Right now the pts(4) entries only go from 0
to 255. Because we're going to touch these files anyway, increase the
number to 511.
Discussed with: philip (ex-mentor)
do not have these device special files. Where this previously failed
quietly, it now emits annoying but complete messages at best and
incomprehensible prefixes on average. During all of October, this is
a string of 16 O's, as in:
:
Starting inetd.
Sun Oct 17 15:09:09 PDT 2004
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
FreeBSD/ia64 (itanium.pn.xcllnt.net) (ttyu2)
login:
dcons(4): very simple console and gdb port driver
dcons_crom(4): FireWire attachment
dconschat(8): User interface to dcons
Tested with: i386, i386-PAE, and sparc64.
device special files created by sio(4). The latter are the device
special files created by uart(4). As of this moment sio(4) is not
supported on ia64... by me, that is :-)
All functionality from the previous system has been preserved, and
users should still customize their system boot with the familiar
methods, rc.conf, rc.conf.local, rc.firewall, sysctl.conf, etc.
Users who have customized versions of scripts that have been removed
should take great care when upgrading, since the compatibility code
that used those old scripts has also been removed.