multiple gettys, why use them?

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <401 at amanue.UUCP> jr at amanue.UUCP (Jim Rosenberg) writes:

>In order to get multiple shells from the Office one has to do something
>special for each shell.  With multiple gettys all one has to do is log in.

The "something special" consists of selecting "full screen unix" with the
arrow key and pressing <enter>. Not so difficult.  Hit suspend, select the
office and do it again.. (On 3.51.. Earlier version needed a small change
to the shell start-up command to give you a full screen).

>On each window, if you foul up your terminal settings all you have to do is log
>out and log back in again and woila, you have your screen fixed up completely.

Likewise from the office, and you just have to press <enter> for the new screen
since the "full screen unix" will already be selected.

>.. with multiple gettys I am *sure* each shell is running in its own
>process group.  With multiple shells from the Office I'm not sure.  (Someone
>wanna comment on this?)

Yes, you can do a "kill 0" from one shell without bothering any of the others.

>I do have some remote users who dial in over the modem.  How easy to test
>their logins by just logging in as them with their initial password on one of
>the windows.

su - username
would work nicely from a full-screen shell.

>Just for the record, I am *not* bigoted against PARC-style user interfaces.

The user interface to the SysV lp spooler is especially gruesome, and that
is about the only thing I use out of the office other than starting a bunch
of full-screen shells.

>Are multiple gettys right for you???  **TRY THEM AND SEE!!**  Each to his own
>(or as they say in France, chalk one awesome goo!)

The only functional advantage seems to be the savings of a process (ua) and
a window for it.

Les Mikesell