Re: Dumb Terminals

[Ian Darwin <ian@darwinsys.com>]

>How could I get it so OpenBSD would send a virtual console over a serial
>port so I could hook a dumb terminal up to it?

It won't literally be "a virtual console" but it will be a serial
terminal login session, which amounts to the same thing. Dumb terminals
were in use on UNIX for a decade before the computers that gave rise to
virtual consoles came into being.

Plug the terminal into a given serial port.

Find out the name corresponding to that serial port.

Add an entry for it (minus the "/dev/" part) in /etc/ttys

E.g., on a PC with the dumb terminal on COM1, which OpenBSD calls /dev/tty00:

tty00   "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"   vt100 on

The vt100 can be replaced by whatever model of terminal it is.

The on is to enable, of course. You can turn the line off temporarily
by changing it to (you guessed it) off.

Further reading: man pages: ttys, init, login, gettytab