PTS(7D)PTS(7D)NAMEpts - STREAMS pseudo-tty slave driver
DESCRIPTION
The pseudo-tty subsystem simulates a terminal connection, where the
master side represents the terminal and the slave represents the user
process's special device end point. In order to use the pseudo-tty sub‐
system, a node for the master side driver /dev/ptmx and N nodes for the
slave driver (N is determined at installation time) must be installed.
The names of the slave devices are /dev/pts/M where M has the values 0
through N-1. When the master device is opened, the corresponding slave
device is automatically locked out. No user may open that slave device
until its permissions are adjusted and the device unlocked by calling
functions grantpt(3C) and unlockpt(3C). The user can then invoke the
open system call with the name that is returned by the ptsname(3C)
function. See the example below.
Only one open is allowed on a master device. Multiple opens are allowed
on the slave device. After both the master and slave have been opened,
the user has two file descriptors which are end points of a full duplex
connection composed of two streams automatically connected at the mas‐
ter and slave drivers. The user may then push modules onto either side
of the stream pair. The user needs to push the ptem(7M) and ldterm(7M)
modules onto the slave side of the pseudo-terminal subsystem to get
terminal semantics.
The master and slave drivers pass all messages to their adjacent
queues. Only the M_FLUSH needs some processing. Because the read queue
of one side is connected to the write queue of the other, the FLUSHR
flag is changed to the FLUSHW flag and vice versa. When the master
device is closed an M_HANGUP message is sent to the slave device which
will render the device unusable. The process on the slave side gets the
errno EIO when attempting to write on that stream but it will be able
to read any data remaining on the stream head read queue. When all the
data has been read, read returns 0 indicating that the stream can no
longer be used. On the last close of the slave device, a 0-length mes‐
sage is sent to the master device. When the application on the master
side issues a read() or getmsg() and 0 is returned, the user of the
master device decides whether to issue a close() that dismantles the
pseudo-terminal subsystem. If the master device is not closed, the
pseudo-tty subsystem will be available to another user to open the
slave device. Since 0-length messages are used to indicate that the
process on the slave side has closed and should be interpreted that way
by the process on the master side, applications on the slave side
should not write 0-length messages. If that occurs, the write returns
0, and the 0-length message is discarded by the ptem module.
The standard STREAMS system calls can access the pseudo-tty devices.
The slave devices support the O_NDELAY and O_NONBLOCK flags.
EXAMPLES
int fdm fds;
char *slavename;
extern char *ptsname();
fdm = open("/dev/ptmx", O_RDWR); /* open master */
grantpt(fdm); /* change permission of slave */
unlockpt(fdm); /* unlock slave */
slavename = ptsname(fdm); /* get name of slave */
fds = open(slavename, O_RDWR); /* open slave */
ioctl(fds, I_PUSH, "ptem"); /* push ptem */
ioctl(fds, I_PUSH, "ldterm"); /* push ldterm*/
FILES
/dev/ptmx
master clone device
/dev/pts/M
slave devices (M = 0 -> N-1)
SEE ALSOgrantpt(3C), ptsname(3C), unlockpt(3C), ldterm(7M), ptm(7D), ptem(7M)
STREAMS Programming Guide
Aug 21, 1992 PTS(7D)
