xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/pty.4 (revision 3cbb4cc200f8a0ad7ed08233425ea54524a21f1c)
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28.\" $FreeBSD$
29.\"
30.Dd October 28, 2019
31.Dt PTY 4
32.Os
33.Sh NAME
34.Nm pty
35.Nd old-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 before it was replaced by
43.Xr pts 4 .
44This traditional naming is still used in Linux.
45When the device
46.Pa /dev/ptyXX
47is being opened, a new terminal shall be created with the
48.Xr pts 4
49driver.
50A device node for this terminal shall be created, which has the name
51.Pa /dev/ttyXX .
52.Pp
53The
54.Nm
55driver also provides a cloning System V
56.Pa /dev/ptmx
57device.
58.Pp
59New code should not try to allocate pseudo-terminals using this
60interface.
61It is only provided for compatibility with older C libraries
62that tried to open such devices when
63.Xr posix_openpt 2
64was being called,
65and for running Linux binaries.
66.Sh FILES
67The BSD-style compatibility pseudo-terminal driver uses the following
68device names:
69.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /dev/pty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]"
70.It Pa /dev/pty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]
71Pseudo-terminal master devices.
72.It Pa /dev/tty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]
73Pseudo-terminal slave devices.
74.It Pa /dev/ptmx
75Control device, returns a file descriptor to a new master
76pseudo-terminal when opened.
77.El
78.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
79None.
80.Sh SEE ALSO
81.Xr posix_openpt 2 ,
82.Xr pts 4 ,
83.Xr tty 4
84.Sh HISTORY
85A
86pseudo-terminal driver appeared in
87.Bx 4.2 .
88.Sh BUGS
89Unlike previous implementations, the master and slave device nodes are
90destroyed when the PTY becomes unused.
91A call to
92.Xr stat 2
93on a nonexistent master device will already cause a new master device
94node to be created.
95The master device can only be destroyed by opening and closing it.
96.Pp
97The
98.Nm
99driver cannot be unloaded, because it cannot determine if it is being
100used.
101