linux man page for console

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 consoles was compiled into the kernel (in tty.h: #define NR_CONSOLES	8)  and  could	be
       changed by editing and recompiling.  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(1) (in inittab(5)) to start a mingetty(8) (or agetty(8)) on the console; (b)
       ask openvt(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; (c) use the program chvt(1).  (The key mapping is user settable, see loadkeys(1); the above mentioned key combinations
       are according to the default settings.)

       The command deallocvt(1) (formerly disalloc) will free the memory taken by the screen buffers for consoles that no longer have any  associ-
       ated process.

   Properties
       Consoles  carry a lot of state.	I hope to document that some other time.  The most important fact is that the consoles simulate vt100 ter-
       minals.	In particular, a console is reset to the initial state by printing the two characters ESC c.  All escape sequences can be found in
       console_codes(4).

FILES
       /dev/console
       /dev/tty*

SEE ALSO
       chvt(1),  deallocvt(1),	init(1),  loadkeys(1),	mknod(1),  openvt(1),  console_codes(4),  console_ioctl(4),  tty(4), ttyS(4), charsets(7),
       agetty(8), mapscrn(8), mingetty(8), resizecons(8), setfont(8)

Linux								    1994-10-31								CONSOLE(4)