[wplug] General question

[Robert Dale]

On Sun, 3 Feb 2002, Doug Green wrote:

> This is a general (very basic) question about linux/unix/networking. I
> know that I have some number of available tty's on my system (I think
> it's 7 or so). This means that I can have 7 different users logged in at
> any given time (concurrently), right? Is this upper limit of users
> limited by my OS (linux vs. BSD or HP/X or...), or is it a configurable

For one, those are console TTYs.  They are configurable, but I don't know
the maximum.

> feature? Can I serve X-windows to all of them, if so, how (something
> like porting the display to a different tty)? Finally, how do the "big

You can run X on all of them, but they would be to the console only.

> computers" like the servers at Pitt (or an ISP like Telerama) handle so
> many users at once- do they have a ton of computers (each with 7 or so
> users) or is there some way to configure how many tty's your system
> listens for? 
> 
> PS- The origin of the question is that is Scaife Hall (Pitt campus),
> there are a number of dumb-terminals- all of which have X-windows being
> ported to them. There are probably 20 terminals on the 4th floor alone.
> Are these all connected to the SAME server?? If so HOW?

What telnet, ssh, and remote X use are called pseudo terminals (PTYs).
By default, you can have 256 PTYs in linux 2.4 with a max of 2048.

-- 
Robert Dale

wplug member since 1998