Re: Change max ttys from 8 to 12?

[Valery Ushakov <uwe%stderr.spb.ru@localhost>]

On Tue, Dec 19, 2023 at 11:10:52 +0100, Dan-Simon Myrland wrote:

> 2) Make a custom kernel with the option WSDISPLAY_DEFAULTSCREENS=12

Why?  WSDISPLAY_DEFAULTSCREENS is the number of screens pre-created by
the kernel, but you can always create as many as you need (subject to
WSDISPLAY_MAXSCREEN), see /etc/wscons.conf and /etc/rc.d/wscons.  The
default for that default is actually 0.


> I don't mind that NetBSD has four active ttys by default, but the steps
> to enable all 12 seems unnecessarily tedious. I realize that not all
> architectures have 12 function keys, but laptops usually do. If the
> kernel supported a maximum of 12 ttys on popular architectures,
> enabling then would only require steps 1 and 2.

But where do you stop?  macs have like, what, 19?

I don't like the idea.  The only real limitation currently is the
switching commands/keysyms.  WSDISPLAY_MAXSCREEN is a static limit b/c
it was easier to hardcode it, but it may be made an option easily as
far as I can tell.

Switching from a fixed size array to a dynamic one is probably not too
much work either.  But then, overall, I think that trying to make the
kernel substitute for screen, tmux (in base), etc is kinda dead end,
so I'd rather we don't encourage it.

-uwe