1TTYSLOT(3) Linux Programmer's Manual TTYSLOT(3)
2
6 ttyslot - find the slot of the current user's terminal in some file
7
9 #include <unistd.h> /* on BSD-like systems, and Linux */
10 #include <stdlib.h> /* on System V-like systems */
11 int ttyslot(void);
13 Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
15 ttyslot(): _BSD_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED &&
17 ! _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500)
18
20 The legacy function ttyslot() returns the index of the current user's
21 entry in some file.
22 Now "What file?" you ask. Well, let's first look at some history.
24 Ancient History
26 There used to be a file /etc/ttys in Unix V6, that was read by the
27 init(8) program to find out what to do with each terminal line. Each
28 line consisted of three characters. The first character was either '0'
29 or '1', where '0' meant "ignore". The second character denoted the
30 terminal: '8' stood for "/dev/tty8". The third character was an argu‐
31 ment to getty(8) indicating the sequence of line speeds to try ('-'
32 was: start trying 110 baud). Thus a typical line was "18-". A hang on
33 some line was solved by changing the '1' to a '0', signaling init,
34 changing back again, and signaling init again.
35 In Unix V7 the format was changed: here the second character was the
37 argument to getty(8) indicating the sequence of line speeds to try ('0'
38 was: cycle through 300-1200-150-110 baud; '4' was for the on-line con‐
39 sole DECwriter) while the rest of the line contained the name of the
40 tty. Thus a typical line was "14console".
41 Later systems have more elaborate syntax. System V-like systems have
43 /etc/inittab instead.
44 Ancient History (2)
46 On the other hand, there is the file /etc/utmp listing the people cur‐
47 rently logged in. It is maintained by login(1). It has a fixed size,
48 and the appropriate index in the file was determined by login(1) using
49 the ttyslot() call to find the number of the line in /etc/ttys (count‐
50 ing from 1).
51 The semantics of ttyslot
53 Thus, the function ttyslot() returns the index of the controlling ter‐
54 minal of the calling process in the file /etc/ttys, and that is (usu‐
55 ally) the same as the index of the entry for the current user in the
56 file /etc/utmp. BSD still has the /etc/ttys file, but System V-like
57 systems do not, and hence cannot refer to it. Thus, on such systems
58 the documentation says that ttyslot() returns the current user's index
59 in the user accounting data base.
60
62 If successful, this function returns the slot number. On error (e.g.,
63 if none of the file descriptors 0, 1 or 2 is associated with a terminal
64 that occurs in this data base) it returns 0 on Unix V6 and V7 and BSD-
65 like systems, but -1 on System V-like systems.
66
68 SUSv1; marked as LEGACY in SUSv2; removed in POSIX.1-2001. SUSv2
69 requires -1 on error.
70
72 The utmp file is found various places on various systems, such as
73 /etc/utmp, /var/adm/utmp, /var/run/utmp.
74 The glibc2 implementation of this function reads the file _PATH_TTYS,
76 defined in <ttyent.h> as "/etc/ttys". It returns 0 on error. Since
77 Linux systems do not usually have "/etc/ttys", it will always return 0.
78 Minix also has fttyslot(fd).
80
82 getttyent(3), ttyname(3), utmp(5)
83
85 This page is part of release 3.25 of the Linux man-pages project. A
86 description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
87 be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
88GNU 2007-11-26 TTYSLOT(3)