On Thu, 4 May 2006, Hauke Fath wrote:

> Funny you should mention that, since I ran into the same thing while
> installing -current on a Quadra 650 yesterday. Actually it was even
> weirder, because I had
>
> tty00   "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"         vt100   on secure
>
> in /etc/ttys and could log in on serial console as vanilla user, but not as
> root, in spite of the 'secure'.

The real device node is ttyZ0 (as described in /dev/MAKEDEV) but in this
case tty00 is just a link to it. See the manual page for zstty(4) also!

The same problem is discussed here:
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2005/01/21/0002.html
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2005/01/21/0004.html

> Could somebody please point me to the motivation of changing the built-in
> serial ports from tty0{0,1} to ttyZ{0,1}?

I think tty0? used to represent serial devices based on NS16550 (and the
like) while ttyZ are device nodes for zstty which are based on Zilog 8530.

> Why are these new devices not used in /etc/ttys?

Maybe, because the people are often using the normal console (keyboard +
video/framebuffer) and not the serial ports on mac68k? In
this case it's hard to find out the missing parts because by
activating getty on tty00 the serial ports just work (the links are
correctly made in /dev).

> Why is there a surplus of tty devices in /etc/ttys,
> anyway, which have never been and will never be used?

I think they are there because one can use multiport
serial cards and needs more ttys (especially on other archs).

Regards,

Johny.