ttyslot

TTYSLOT(3)                 Linux Programmer's Manual                TTYSLOT(3)



NAME
       ttyslot - find the slot of the current user's terminal in some file

SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h>    /* on BSD-like systems  */
       #include <stdlib.h>    /* on SYSV-like systems */

       int ttyslot(void);

DESCRIPTION
       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.

   Ancient 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  argu-
       ment  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', signalling init,
       changing back again, and signalling 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  con-
       sole  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.   SYSV-like  systems  have
       /etc/inittab instead.

   Ancient History (2)
       On  the other hand, there is the file /etc/utmp listing the people cur-
       rently logged in. It is maintained by login(8).  It has a  fixed  size,
       and  the appropriate index in the file was determined by login(8) using
       the ttyslot() call to find the number of the line in /etc/ttys  (count-
       ing from 1).

   The semantics of ttyslot
       Thus,  the function ttyslot() returns the index of the controlling ter-
       minal of the current process in the file /etc/ttys, and that  is  (usu-
       ally)  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  SYSV-like  sys-
       tems  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.

RETURN VALUE
       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 SYSV-like systems.

NOTES
       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).

HISTORY
       ttyslot() appeared in Unix V7.

CONFORMS TO
       XPG2. Legacy in SUSv2. Deleted in SUSv3.  SUSv2 requires -1 on error.

SEE ALSO
       getttyent(3), ttyname(3), utmp(5)



GNU                               2002-07-20                        TTYSLOT(3)