On Mon, Mar 19, 2001 at 11:27:44PM -0800, Alexander Poquet wrote: > hey folks. > > i was just wondering about virtual terms -- is there an easy way to change > how many there are? debian seems to default at 6 running getty, and X > opens up 7. presumably i can use as many as 12? how does this work? > is it as simple as running getty from init, or is there a kernel definition > somewhere that specifies how many i can have, or a little of both? > > is there some documentation on the subject somewhere? > > -- > Alexander Poquet | We leave the obvious generalizations to the > [EMAIL PROTECTED] | reader. -- Israel Herstein > Use of PGP preferable in reply | Use Linux!
I think up until kernel 1.1.54 you had to recompile to change the number of virtual consoles. Now you can just add a line in /etc/inittab: 8:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty8 This will give you another console on cntrl-alt-f8 after a reboot. Be careful using tty7 to avoid an X conflict--I don't know what would happen if getty and X both tried to use the same device. There's a huge number of tty's available (try ls /dev/tty*), but I suppose you're limited to 12, one for each of the F keys.