Overview of the System Console and Locally Connected Terminal Devices

The system console is a terminal that has special attributes and is used for certain purposes. For example. kernel messages that are meant for an administrator are sent to the Console and not other terminals.

A terminal is a means of interacting with Oracle Solaris. Your system's bitmapped graphics display is not the same as an alphanumeric terminal. An alphanumeric terminal connects to a serial port and displays only text. You do not have to perform any special steps to administer the graphics display.

A terminal could also be associated with the physical monitor and keyboard layout of a computer. What sets the graphical terminal apart is that it must be associated with the graphics card and monitor of a computer. So, instead of transmitting characters out of a serial port, the characters are drawn onto the memory of the graphics card that is in the computer.

SMF Services That Manage the System Console and Locally Connected Terminal Devices

The system console and locally connected terminal devices are represented as instances of the SMF service, svc:/system/console. This service defines most of the behavior, with each instance having specific overrides to the settings that are inherited from the service. The ttymon program is used to offer login services for these terminals. Each terminal uses a separate instance of the ttymon program. Command-line arguments that are passed by the service to the ttymon program govern its behavior.

The service instances that are supplied with the system are as follows:

• svc:/system/console-login:default

  The default instance always represents that the ttymon program offer a login to the system hardware console. For an example, see How to Modify Settings for the System Console.

• svc:/system/console-login:{vt2, vt3, vt4, vt5, vt6}

  Additional service instances are provided for the system's virtual consoles. If virtual consoles are not available, these services are automatically disabled. For more information, see the vtdaemon(1M) man page.

• svc:/system/console-login:{terma, termb}

  The svc:/system/console-login:terma and svc:/system/console-login:termb services are provided as a convenience. These services an assist you in setting up login services for additional /dev/term/a and /dev/term/b ports. These services are disabled by default.

You can define additional service instances as part of the svc:system/console-login service. For example, if you had a /dev/term/f device which you needed to support, you could instantiate 'svc:/system/console-login:termf' and configure it appropriately.