xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/pty.4 (revision f39bffc62c1395bde25d152c7f68fdf7cbaab414)
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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 and System V-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
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.
63.Sh FILES
64The BSD-style compatibility pseudo-terminal driver uses the following
65device names:
66.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /dev/pty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]"
67.It Pa /dev/pty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]
68Pseudo-terminal master devices.
69.It Pa /dev/tty[l-sL-S][0-9a-v]
70Pseudo-terminal slave devices.
71.It Pa /dev/ptmx
72Control device, returns a file descriptor to a new master
73pseudo-terminal when opened.
74.El
75.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
76None.
77.Sh SEE ALSO
78.Xr posix_openpt 2 ,
79.Xr pts 4 ,
80.Xr tty 4
81.Sh HISTORY
82A
83pseudo-terminal driver appeared in
84.Bx 4.2 .
85.Sh BUGS
86Unlike previous implementations, the master and slave device nodes are
87destroyed when the PTY becomes unused.
88A call to
89.Xr stat 2
90on a nonexistent master device will already cause a new master device
91node to be created.
92The master device can only be destroyed by opening and closing it.
93.Pp
94The
95.Nm
96driver cannot be unloaded, because it cannot determine if it is being
97used.
98