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TTYSLOT(3) Linux Programmer's Manual TTYSLOT(3)
ttyslot - find the slot of the current user's terminal in some file
#include <unistd.h> /* on BSD-like systems, and Linux */
#include <stdlib.h> /* on System V-like systems */
int ttyslot(void);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
ttyslot():
_BSD_SOURCE ||
_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE_ < 500 && _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED
The legacy function ttyslot() returns the index of the current user's entry in
some file.
Now "What file?" you ask. Well, let's first look at some history.
There used to be a file /etc/ttys in UNIX V6, that was read by the init(8)
program to find out what to do with each terminal line. Each line consisted
of three characters. The first character was either '0' or '1', where '0'
meant "ignore". The second character denoted the terminal: '8' stood for
"/dev/tty8". The third character was an argument to getty(8) indicating the
sequence of line speeds to try ('-' was: start trying 110 baud). Thus a
typical line was "18-". A hang on some line was solved by changing the '1' to
a '0', signaling init, changing back again, and signaling init again.
In UNIX V7 the format was changed: here the second character was the argument
to getty(8) indicating the sequence of line speeds to try ('0' was: cycle
through 300-1200-150-110 baud; '4' was for the on-line console DECwriter)
while the rest of the line contained the name of the tty. Thus a typical line
was "14console".
Later systems have more elaborate syntax. System V-like systems have
/etc/inittab instead.
On the other hand, there is the file /etc/utmp listing the people currently
logged in. It is maintained by login(1). It has a fixed size, and the
appropriate index in the file was determined by login(1) using the ttyslot()
call to find the number of the line in /etc/ttys (counting from 1).
Thus, the function ttyslot() returns the index of the controlling terminal of
the calling process in the file /etc/ttys, and that is (usually) the same as
the index of the entry for the current user in the file /etc/utmp. BSD still
has the /etc/ttys file, but System V-like systems do not, and hence cannot
refer to it. Thus, on such systems the documentation says that ttyslot()
returns the current user's index in the user accounting data base.
If successful, this function returns the slot number. On error (e.g., if none
of the file descriptors 0, 1 or 2 is associated with a terminal that occurs in
this data base) it returns 0 on UNIX V6 and V7 and BSD-like systems, but -1 on
System V-like systems.
SUSv1; marked as LEGACY in SUSv2; removed in POSIX.1-2001. SUSv2 requires -1
on error.
The utmp file is found various places on various systems, such as /etc/utmp,
/var/adm/utmp, /var/run/utmp.
The glibc2 implementation of this function reads the file _PATH_TTYS, defined
in <ttyent.h> as "/etc/ttys". It returns 0 on error. Since Linux systems do
not usually have "/etc/ttys", it will always return 0.
Minix also has fttyslot(fd).
getttyent(3), ttyname(3), utmp(5)
This page is part of release 3.32 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
GNU 2010-09-20 TTYSLOT(3)
HTML rendering created 2010-12-03 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface