cvs commit: src/etc/etc.mips ttys

[John Baldwin]

On Monday 05 May 2008 04:07:22 am Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> In message <481EB19B.3000201 at freebsd.org>, Colin Percival writes:
> >Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> >> In message <200805050535.m455ZmI1030493 at repoman.freebsd.org>, Warner
> >> Losh write
> >>
> >> s:
> >>>  Added files:
> >>>    etc/etc.mips         ttys
> >>>  Log:
> >>>  Mips ttys file.  Copied from i386 version with removal of the vga
> >>>  entries.
> >>
> >> We should really replace this file with a script that generates it
> >> from a set of sensible parameters at build-time.
> >
> >Yes please -- kmacy might have worked around this, but at one point this
> >was the only non-kernel file which needed to be different for Xen builds.
>
> And for anyone looking at this, there is also a task to eliminate the
> pty devices in this file, the reason why they are there has to do with
> the introduction of the really weird notion of "remote logins" back in
> the early 1980'ies, we really could do better.

Err, I thought it was because utmp still uses the line index in /etc/ttys so 
ptys have to be listed in /etc/ttys to get an index.  I haven't looked at 
utmpx, but it might be nice if we had a utmp format that 1) didn't limit 
usernames to 16 chars, and 2) stored the name of the tty rather than a dev_t.  
2) is what I think has broken 'w -M /var/crash/vmcore.X' since 5.x.

-- 
John Baldwin