PTY(7)							     Linux Programmer's Manual							    PTY(7)

NAME

       pty - pseudoterminal interfaces

DESCRIPTION

       A  pseudoterminal  (sometimes abbreviated "pty") is a pair of virtual character devices that provide a bidirectional communication channel.
       One end of the channel is called the master; the other end is called the slave.	The slave end of the pseudoterminal provides an  interface
       that  behaves  exactly  like a classical terminal.  A process that expects to be connected to a terminal, can open the slave end of a pseu-
       doterminal and then be driven by a program that has opened the master end.  Anything that is written on the master end is provided  to  the
       process	on  the slave end as though it was input typed on a terminal.  For example, writing the interrupt character (usually control-C) to
       the master device would cause an interrupt signal (SIGINT) to be generated for the foreground process group that is connected to the slave.
       Conversely, anything that is written to the slave end of the pseudoterminal can be read by the process that is connected to the master end.
       Pseudoterminals are used by applications such as network login services (ssh(1),  rlogin(1),  telnet(1)),  terminal  emulators,	script(1),
       screen(1), and expect(1).

       Historically,  two  pseudoterminal APIs have evolved: BSD and System V.	SUSv1 standardized a pseudoterminal API based on the System V API,
       and this API should be employed in all new programs that use pseudoterminals.

       Linux provides both BSD-style and (standardized) System V-style pseudoterminals.  System V-style terminals  are	commonly  called  UNIX	98
       pseudoterminals	on Linux systems.  Since kernel 2.6.4, BSD-style pseudoterminals are considered deprecated (they can be disabled when con-
       figuring the kernel); UNIX 98 pseudoterminals should be used in new applications.

   UNIX 98 pseudoterminals
       An unused UNIX 98 pseudoterminal master is opened by calling posix_openpt(3).  (This function opens the master clone device, /dev/ptmx; see
       pts(4).)   After  performing  any  program-specific  initializations,  changing	the  ownership	and  permissions of the slave device using
       grantpt(3), and unlocking the slave using unlockpt(3)), the corresponding slave device can be  opened  by  passing  the	name  returned	by
       ptsname(3) in a call to open(2).

       The  Linux  kernel imposes a limit on the number of available UNIX 98 pseudoterminals.  In kernels up to and including 2.6.3, this limit is
       configured at kernel compilation time (CONFIG_UNIX98_PTYS), and the permitted number of pseudoterminals can be up to 2048, with	a  default
       setting	of  256.   Since  kernel  2.6.4,  the  limit  is  dynamically  adjustable  via /proc/sys/kernel/pty/max, and a corresponding file,
       /proc/sys/kernel/pty/nr, indicates how many pseudoterminals are currently in use.  For further details on these two files, see proc(5).

   BSD pseudoterminals
       BSD-style pseudoterminals are provided as precreated pairs, with names of the form /dev/ptyXY (master) and /dev/ttyXY (slave), where X is a
       letter  from  the  16-character set [p-za-e], and Y is a letter from the 16-character set [0-9a-f].  (The precise range of letters in these
       two sets varies across UNIX implementations.)  For example, /dev/ptyp1 and /dev/ttyp1 constitute a  BSD	pseudoterminal	pair.	A  process
       finds an unused pseudoterminal pair by trying to open(2) each pseudoterminal master until an open succeeds.  The corresponding pseudotermi-
       nal slave (substitute "tty" for "pty" in the name of the master) can then be opened.

FILES

       /dev/ptmx (UNIX 98 master clone device)
       /dev/pts/* (UNIX 98 slave devices)
       /dev/pty[p-za-e][0-9a-f] (BSD master devices)
       /dev/tty[p-za-e][0-9a-f] (BSD slave devices)

NOTES

       A description of the TIOCPKT ioctl(2), which controls packet mode operation, can be found in tty_ioctl(4).

       The BSD ioctl(2) operations TIOCSTOP, TIOCSTART, TIOCUCNTL, and TIOCREMOTE have not been implemented under Linux.

SEE ALSO

       select(2), setsid(2), forkpty(3), openpty(3), termios(3), pts(4), tty(4), tty_ioctl(4)

COLOPHON

       This page is part of release 3.53 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs,  can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux								    2005-10-10								    PTY(7)