xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/pty.4 (revision 2e3f49888ec8851bafb22011533217487764fdb0)
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28.Dd October 28, 2019
29.Dt PTY 4
30.Os
31.Sh NAME
32.Nm pty
33.Nd old-style compatibility pseudo-terminal driver
34.Sh SYNOPSIS
35.Cd "device pty"
36.Sh DESCRIPTION
37The
38.Nm
39driver provides support for the traditional BSD naming scheme that was
40used for accessing pseudo-terminals before it was replaced by
41.Xr pts 4 .
42This traditional naming is still used in Linux.
43When the device
44.Pa /dev/ptyXX
45is being opened, a new terminal shall be created with the
46.Xr pts 4
47driver.
48A device node for this terminal shall be created, which has the name
49.Pa /dev/ttyXX .
50.Pp
51The
52.Nm
53driver also provides a cloning System V
54.Pa /dev/ptmx
55device.
56.Pp
57New code should not try to allocate pseudo-terminals using this
58interface.
59It is only provided for compatibility with older C libraries
60that tried to open such devices when
61.Xr posix_openpt 2
62was being called,
63and for running Linux binaries.
64.Sh FILES
65The BSD-style compatibility pseudo-terminal driver uses the following
66device names:
67.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /dev/pty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]"
68.It Pa /dev/pty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]
69Pseudo-terminal master devices.
70.It Pa /dev/tty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]
71Pseudo-terminal slave devices.
72.It Pa /dev/ptmx
73Control device, returns a file descriptor to a new master
74pseudo-terminal when opened.
75.El
76.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
77None.
78.Sh SEE ALSO
79.Xr posix_openpt 2 ,
80.Xr pts 4 ,
81.Xr tty 4
82.Sh HISTORY
83A
84pseudo-terminal driver appeared in
85.Bx 4.2 .
86.Sh BUGS
87Unlike previous implementations, the master and slave device nodes are
88destroyed when the PTY becomes unused.
89A call to
90.Xr stat 2
91on a nonexistent master device will already cause a new master device
92node to be created.
93The master device can only be destroyed by opening and closing it.
94.Pp
95The
96.Nm
97driver cannot be unloaded, because it cannot determine if it is being
98used.
99