This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles.

For more information about the manual page format, see the manual page for manpages(5).

GETTY(8)                  BSD System Manager's Manual                 GETTY(8)

NAME
     getty -- set terminal mode

SYNOPSIS
     getty [type [tty]]

DESCRIPTION
     The getty utility is called by launchd(8) to open and initialize the tty line, read a login name, and
     invoke login(1).

     The argument tty is the special device file in /dev to open for the terminal (for example, ``ttyh0'').
     If there is no argument or the argument is `-', the tty line is assumed to be open as file descriptor
     0.

     The type argument can be used to make getty treat the terminal line specially.  This argument is used
     as an index into the gettytab(5) database, to determine the characteristics of the line.  If there is
     no argument, or there is no such table, the default table is used.  If there is no /etc/gettytab a set
     of system defaults is used.  If indicated by the table located, getty will clear the terminal screen,
     print a banner heading, and prompt for a login name.  Usually either the banner or the login prompt
     will include the system hostname.

     Most of the default actions of getty can be circumvented, or modified, by a suitable gettytab table.

     The getty utility can be set to timeout after some interval, which will cause dial up lines to hang up
     if the login name is not entered reasonably quickly.

FILES
     /etc/gettytab
     /etc/ttys

DIAGNOSTICS
     ttyxx: No such device or address.
     ttyxx: No such file or address.

     A terminal which is turned on in the ttys file cannot be opened, likely because the requisite lines are
     either not configured into the system, the associated device was not attached during boot-time system
     configuration, or the special file in /dev does not exist.

SEE ALSO
     login(1), ioctl(2), tty(4), gettytab(5), ttys(5), launchd(8)

HISTORY
     A getty utility appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.

BSD                              June 4, 1993                              BSD