ttylogin-starter 1 user commands nosh ttylogin-starter demand-start ttylogin@.service services on active kernel virtual terminals ttylogin-starter --verbose ttylogin-starter automatically runs system-control1 to start a ttylogin@.service service on kernel virtual terminals as they are switched-to. It does not apply to user-space virtual terminals or to real terminals. Conventionally, in the absence of ttylogin-starter, TUI login services for all terminals are enabled and disabled in the usual way; and started as a consequence of being wanted by the multi-user target. The external configuration file import subsystem will preset all relevant ttylogin@.service services, using the ttys5 database (and any presets) to determine whether a TUI login service is enabled or disabled, as explained in system-control1. On the BSDs, the conventional mechanism applies to all terminals, virtual and real. ttylogin-starter does nothing on the BSDs, except pause forever. It exists for script compatibility only. On Linux, one can alternatively arrange, for just kernel virtual terminals specifically, for TUI login services to be started on-demand, as the terminals are switched to and become the "active" kernel virtual terminal, rather than have them always running. This is done by disabling all kernel virtual terminals and letting ttylogin-starter start them on-demand, which it does with the system-control start command, ignoring the disabled state of the service. It does this by looping forever, monitoring the state of the /sys/class/tty/tty0/active file with poll2. This file reports the currently active kernel virtual terminal name. Each time that poll2 reports a change in the currently active virtual terminal, ttylogin-starter starts the TUI login service for that terminal. If the services do not exist, it makes no attempt to create them. Currently, no provision is made for excluding kernel virtual terminals that are used by X servers or by console-fb-realizer1. ttylogin-starter should not be used in conjunction with either of those, and instead the normal service enable/disable mechanism should be employed. linux-vt4 Kernel virtual terminal switching on Linux Jonathan de Boyne Pollard