TTYACTION(5)              NetBSD File Formats Manual              TTYACTION(5)

NAME
     ttyaction -- ttyaction file format

DESCRIPTION
     The ttyaction file specifies site-specific commands to run when a login
     session begins and ends. The ttyaction file contains a list of newline
     separated records, where each record has the following three fields:

     ttyname   Name of the tty line(s) on which this line should apply.  The
               name is relative to the /dev directory, similar to how such
               devices are named in the /etc/ttys file.

     action    Name of the action for which this line should apply.  The
               action names currently defined are "login", "getty", "telnetd"
               and "rlogind" which indicate which program is processing this
               file.  (Note that "login" begins a login session, while the
               other three are run after a login session ends.)

     command   What command to run if this record matches.

     The first two fields are delimited with blanks or tabs, and the command
     field is all text to the end of the line.  Either or both of first two
     fields may contain wildcard match patterns as implemented by the
     fnmatch() library function.

     All command strings are executed by passing them to /bin/sh -c running as
     "root," with an environment containing:

           TTY=ttyname
           ACT=action
           USER=username
           PATH=_PATH_STDPATH

     These variables may be used directly in the shell command part of the
     record for simple tasks such as changing the ownership of related
     devices.  For example:

           console  *      chown ${USER}:tty /dev/mouse

     will chown the mouse appropriately when the console owner changes.

EXAMPLES
     Here are some more example records:

           tty0    login   /somewhere/tty_setup ${TTY}
           tty0    getty   /somewhere/tty_clean ${TTY}
           *       *       /somewhere/ttyfrob ${TTY} ${ACT}

SEE ALSO
     fnmatch(3), ttyaction(3)

HISTORY
     The ideas for the /etc/ttyaction file were inspired by the /etc/fbtab
     file under SunOS.

NetBSD 5.0_STABLE               August 24, 1996              NetBSD 5.0_STABLE
