xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/pty.4 (revision 33644623554bb0fc57ed3c7d874193a498679b22)
1.\" Copyright (c) 2008 Ed Schouten <ed@FreeBSD.org>
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28.\" $FreeBSD$
29.\"
30.Dd August 20, 2008
31.Dt PTY 4
32.Os
33.Sh NAME
34.Nm pty
35.Nd BSD-style compatibility pseudo-terminal driver
36.Sh SYNOPSIS
37.Cd "device pty"
38.Sh DESCRIPTION
39The
40.Nm
41driver provides support for the traditional BSD naming scheme that was
42used for accessing pseudo-terminals.
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
51New code should not try to allocate pseudo-terminals using this
52interface.
53It is only provided for compatibility with older C libraries
54that tried to open such devices when
55.Xr posix_openpt 2
56was being called.
57.Sh FILES
58The BSD-style compatibility pseudo-terminal driver uses the following
59device names:
60.Pp
61.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /dev/pty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]"
62.It Pa /dev/pty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]
63Pseudo-terminal master devices.
64.It Pa /dev/tty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]
65Pseudo-terminal slave devices.
66.El
67.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
68None.
69.Sh SEE ALSO
70.Xr posix_openpt 2 ,
71.Xr pts 4 ,
72.Xr tty 4
73.Sh HISTORY
74A
75pseudo-terminal driver appeared in
76.Bx 4.2 .
77.Sh BUGS
78Unlike previous implementations, the master slave device nodes are
79destroyed when the PTY becomes unused.
80A call to
81.Xr stat 2
82on a nonexistent master device will already cause a new master device
83node to be created.
84The master device can only be destroyed by opening and closing it.
85.Pp
86The
87.Nm
88driver cannot be unloaded, because it cannot determine if it is being
89used.
90