Reassigning kernel output to another vty

[Antony Mawer]

On 28/11/2005 6:29 PM, Rechistov Grigory wrote:
> There are at least 8 virtual terminals by default on FreeBSD, but I 
> seldom (to be exact, never) use all of them, mostly the first 3-4. The 
> kernel messages and another ones (such programs as su(1) also print 
> there time to time) are shown on the first vty. So I often get crazy 
> mixture of this stuff, it covers my Midnight Commander's panels till I 
> refresh them. I wonder if there's a method to show kernel messages on, 
> say, 6th console, logs on 7th etc? Such behaviour is well-known feature 
> of many Linux distros and I remember smth similar when installing 
> FreeBSD, when messages of packages are shown on 4th vty.

You can easily achieve this by specifying /dev/tty## in the 
/etc/syslogd.conf file. For instance, change the line:

*.err;kern.warning;auth.notice;mail.crit                /dev/console

to:

*.err;kern.warning;auth.notice;mail.crit                /dev/ttyv8

Then the message will be directed to the 9th console. Alternatively, you 
can disable some of the normal login screens in /etc/ttys and then point 
syslog to use one of the newly freed-up ttys.

-Antony