.TH SLEEPING-GETTY 8 SLEEPING-GETTY
.SH NAME
sleeping-getty \- Do not start a full-blown getty before it is necessary
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B sleeping-getty
.I vtno
.I getty-command
.IR argument \ ...
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B sleeping\-getty
shall wait until
.I vtno
(a number of a virtual terminal) becomes the foreground console.
Then, it shall
.BR execvp (3)
to
.IR getty-command ,
with
.I getty-command
and all following arguments as the command line arguments.
.PP
Note that
.B sleeping\-getty
works on VT:s, not TTY:s. It cannot wait for a serial console to
become active, only virtual terminals.
.SH EXAMPLE
.nf
/sbin/\fBsleeping\-getty\fP \fI15\fP /sbin/got tty\fI15\fP TERM=linux
/sbin/\fBsleeping\-getty\fP \fI16\fP /sbin/got tty\fI16\fP TERM=linux
/sbin/\fBsleeping\-getty\fP \fI20\fP /sbin/agetty -8 -s 38400 tty\fI20\fP linux
.fi
.SH NOTES
.B sleeping\-getty
does not acquire the TTY. That would be a waste of CPU cycles.
This means, if naïvely used, that if you start your computer,
log in on
.BR tty1 ,
and start
.BR X ,
and have
.B startx
configured to start
.B X
on the next available VT.
.B X
will start on VT\ 2. This is probably not what you want.
Instead you should edit
.B startx
to ensure that a VT lower than a preferred number
(customarily 7) will not be used.
.SH RATIONALE
It is nice to have a score or two of TTY:s available. However,
starting them, can require some unnecessary CPU time and will
waste memory until they are actually used. This becomes extra
important on resource-constrained machines.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR getty (8),
.BR mingetty (8),
.BR agetty (8),
.BR got (8),
.BR vtchs (1),
.BR inittab (5)
.SH AUTHORS
Mattias Andrée
.RI < m@maandree.se >