Re: ut_id questions

[Zack Weinberg <zack@rabi.columbia.edu>]

On Tue, 27 Apr 1999 22:54:03 -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
>There seems to absolutely no convention for what values to put in
>ut_id in the presence of /dev/pts.
>
>In a quick survey, ssh uses the last two characters of ut_line;
>bsd-style login uses everything after the fourth character (which
>happens to be the /); telnetd uses everything after the third character
>(thus beginning with the /).  PAM uses the last four characters.
>
>Are any of these 'right'?

The /dev/pts interface comes from SVR4 by way of Solaris. It
consistently uses everything after /dev/ - pts/0, ttyp0, tty1, ttyS0.
I think this is the Right Thing.  Are the consistency problems inside
libc, or is it just user apps?

>Also, utmp(5) claims that the ut_id should be 'p' followed by the
>number - which seems like a really bad idea, since ttyp0 and pts/0
>would then have the same ut_id.

The Solaris docs describe ut_id as containing the "inittab id, if any"
which strikes me as useless.  Did you mean ut_line?

zw