NAME
pts - pseudo-terminal driver
DESCRIPTION
The pts driver provides support for a device-pair termed a
pseudo-terminal. A pseudo-terminal is a pair of character devices, a
master device and a slave device. The slave device provides to a process
an interface identical to that described in tty(4). However, whereas all
other devices which provide the interface described in tty(4) have a
hardware device of some sort behind them, the slave device has, instead,
another process manipulating it through the master half of the pseudo-
terminal. That is, anything written on the master device is given to the
slave device as input and anything written on the slave device is
presented as input on the master device.
The following ioctl(2) calls apply only to pseudo-terminals:
TIOCPKT Enable/disable packet mode. Packet mode is enabled by
specifying (by reference) a nonzero parameter and disabled
by specifying (by reference) a zero parameter. When
applied to the master side of a pseudo-terminal, each
subsequent read(2) from the terminal will return data
written on the slave part of the pseudo-terminal preceded
by a zero byte (symbolically defined as TIOCPKT_DATA), or a
single byte reflecting control status information. In the
latter case, the byte is an inclusive-or of zero or more of
the bits:
TIOCPKT_FLUSHREAD whenever the read queue for the
terminal is flushed.
TIOCPKT_FLUSHWRITE whenever the write queue for the
terminal is flushed.
TIOCPKT_STOP whenever output to the terminal is
stopped a la ‘^S’.
TIOCPKT_START whenever output to the terminal is
restarted.
TIOCPKT_DOSTOP whenever VSTOP is ‘^S’ and VSTART is
‘^Q’.
TIOCPKT_NOSTOP whenever the start and stop characters
are not ‘^S/^Q’.
While this mode is in use, the presence of control status
information to be read from the master side may be detected
by a select(2) for exceptional conditions.
This mode is used by rlogin(1) and rlogind(8) to implement
a remote-echoed, locally ‘^S/^Q’ flow-controlled remote
login with proper back-flushing of output; it can be used
by other similar programs.
TIOCGPTN Obtain device unit number, which can be used to generate
the filename of the pseudo-terminal slave device. This
ioctl(2) should not be used directly. Instead, the
ptsname(3) function should be used.
TIOCPTMASTER Determine whether the file descriptor is pointing to a
pseudo-terminal master device. This ioctl(2) should not be
used directly. It is used to implement routines like
grantpt(3).
The maximum number of pseudo-terminals is limited to 1000. It is not
possible to use more than 1000 pseudo-terminals, as all software which
use utmp(5) will not be able to handle pseudo-terminals with number
superior to 999.
FILES
The files used by this pseudo-terminals implementation are:
/dev/ptmx Control device, returns a file descriptor to a new master
pseudo-terminal when opened. This device should not be
opened directly. It’s only available for binary
compatibility. New devices should only be allocated with
posix_openpt(2) and openpty(3).
/dev/pts/[num] Pseudo-terminal slave devices.
SYSCTL VARIABLES
The following sysctl(8) variables can be used to modify or monitor pts
behavior.
kern.pts_maxdev
Highest pseudo-terminal unit number to be allocated. Because
utmp(5) is restricted to an 8-byte line name size, pts will not
create any pseudo-terminals with a unit number above 999 by
default. After increasing UT_LINESIZE, this variable can be
changed to allow more than 1000 pseudo-terminals to be allocated
simultaneously.
DIAGNOSTICS
None.
SEE ALSO
grantpt(3), posix_openpt(2), ptsname(3), pty(4), tty(4)
HISTORY
A pseudo-terminal driver appeared in 4.2BSD. In FreeBSD 8.0, it was
replaced with the pts driver.