Re: TIOCGDEV Error on Boot

From: HaroldWho (hlarons_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 02/26/04 

Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 20:00:43 -0000

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 17:24:21 -0700, Kevin Nathan wrote in alt.os.linux.suse:
> On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 20:51:47 GMT
> Snug's Dad <I'm@home.now> wrote:
>
>> I get that too...I would be interested in an explanation of what it
>> is...:)
>>
>
> From a short thread on the Linux Kernel mailing list, it's a low-level
> system call attempting to find the physical console. One msg said
> something about inhibitting boot msgs if not found. Linus Torvalds
> wanted to see them use a symlink in the /proc or /dev trees instead,
> but the discussion ended just a few msgs later. This was around the
> 2.2.x and 2.4.x kernels.
>
> If you want to research it more, do a google search for TIOCGDEV. I
> assume it stands for something like: Terminal I/O Character Graphics
> Device . . .
 
The error msg is the result of boot scripts invoking the /sbin/showconsole
command. (find /etc/init.d -type f -print -exec grep "showconsole" {}
\;|less for a list). If you just run showconsole as root, you'll get out
friend:
showconsole: Warning: the ioctl TIOCGDEV is not known by the kernel
/dev/tty1
whereas showconsole 2>/dev/null just gives "/dev/tty1" as output.

A quick-and-dirty fix would be to edit those boot scripts to include the
"2>/dev/null" param for showconsole, but I doubt it's worth the trouble.

HaroldWho 

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