Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!midway!ncar!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!smsc.sony.com!dce
From: dce@smsc.sony.com (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Security problem with xterm?
Message-ID: <1990Jul11.045603.12102@smsc.sony.com>
Date: 11 Jul 90 04:56:03 GMT
References: <1990Jul6.025816.6905@cs.umn.edu> <9007061325.AA15737@expire.lcs.mit.edu> <1990Jul10.002705.13718@cs.umn.edu>
Reply-To: dce@Sony.COM (David Elliott)
Organization: Sony Microsystems Corp.
Lines: 22

In article <1990Jul10.002705.13718@cs.umn.edu> brsmith@cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith) writes:
>(Of course, how many machines besides suns support TIOCCONS?  I have
>no idea...)

The more people complain about console messages going to their screens,
the more machines will support some kind of simple console
redirection.  All Sony systems have TIOCCONS, probably because it's
fairly straightforward to implement, and because xterm already uses
it.  We definitely had to implement something.

I was a little saddened by the fact that SVR4 doesn't have a single,
consistent mechanism for handling console messages -- just more
mish-mash of different ways to do things.  Berkeley's syslog mechanism
was getting things so close.  If there were one way to get messages to
the console indirectly (that is, besides opening /dev/console and
writing to it), you could write an X client to display these.  As it
is, it requires a kernel mod like TIOCCONS to do it.
-- 
David Elliott
dce@smsc.sony.com | ...!{uunet,mips}!sonyusa!dce
(408)944-4073
"You know my motto: Forgive and uh... the other thing."