RE: Back to AfterStep
Bruce Richardson (brichardson@lineone.net)
Thu, 11 Mar 1999 11:53:03 -0000
>From the console man page (I'll append some comments):
---------------------------------------------------
CONSOLE(4) Linux Programmer's Manual CONSOLE(4)
NAME
console - console terminal and virtual consoles
DESCRIPTION
A Linux system has up to 63 virtual consoles (character
devices with major number 4 and minor number 1 to 63),
usually called /dev/ttyn with 1 <= n <= 63. The current
console is also addressed by /dev/console or /dev/tty0,
the character device with major number 4 and minor number
0. The device files /dev/* are usually created using the
script MAKEDEV, or using mknod(1), usually with mode 0622
and owner root.tty.
Before kernel version 1.1.54 the number of virtual con-
soles was compiled into the kernel (in tty.h: #define
NR_CONSOLES 8) and could be changed by editing and recom-
piling. Since version 1.1.54 virtual consoles are created
on the fly, as soon as they are needed.
Common ways to start a process on a console are: (a) tell
init(8) (in inittab(5)) to start a getty(8) on the con-
sole; (b) ask open(1) to start a process on the console;
(c) start X - it will find the first unused console, and
display its output there. (There is also the ancient
doshell(8).)
Common ways to switch consoles are: (a) use Alt+Fn or
Ctrl+Alt+Fn to switch to console n; AltGr+Fn might bring
you to console n+12 [here Alt and AltGr refer to the left
and right Alt keys, respectively]; (b) use Alt+RightArrow
or Alt+LeftArrow to cycle through the presently allocated
consoles;
--------------------------------------------------
In other words, the console is what you are working on (text console, not
X). The line
exec '/usr/local/bin/afterstep' > /dev/console
directs the standard output (stdout) from the afterstep program to the text
console you ran startx from - you can switch back there (see man page
above) to see it. Actually,
exec '/usr/local/bin/afterstep' > /dev/console 2>&1
would be better, as it sends error output (stderr) to the console as well.
If you run xconsole (in .Xclients, say) then it will capture the console
output and you can see these messages from X.
--
WWW: http://www.afterstep.org/
FTP: ftp://ftp.afterstep.org/
MAIL: http://www.caldera.com/linuxcenter/forums/afterstep.html