OK, thanks guys, I got it working. Yes I had been restarting syslogd... but it was actually my testing methods which were flawed. ;P
I thought that if I echoed something directly to /dev/console it should work, but apparently that isn't the case. I had been using "logger" as you suggested with the symlink (before making the console device) which produced no output, so I didn't bother trying it when I did have the real device (5,1). Using logger with the console device does work. THanks to all for the help. On Thu, 18 Nov 1999, Kevin Heath wrote: > On Thu, Nov 18, 1999 at 02:59:58AM -0500, Nagilum wrote: > > I'm wondering how to get /dev/console to work properly in Debian. > > > > I'm running Debian 2.1 slink, and a 2.2.12 kernel. I've seen that the > > Debian distribution sets /dev/console up as a symlink to /dev/tty0, while > > slackware and Redhat create an actual device with Major # 5 and Minor # 1. > > > > Is there a practical reason for this disparity? I'm just trying to figure > > out why this was done in Debian... also, I can't seem to get console > > messages to log to the console on my Debian box, whereas the same setup > > works fine in slackware. > > As Ian suggested, using /dev/tty0, or device 4,0 for /dev/console > was the recommended way of doing things before kernel 2.1.71. Now > there is a "real" console device at 5,1. Since Slink was a 2.0.xx > system, it makes sense for it to use the old convention. > > > Example: I have: > > auth,authpriv.* /dev/console > > > > in my syslog.conf. These messages should then be logged to the console > > (among other places). The slackware 7 box handles it fine, but I don't > > get any console output at all on the Debian machine. > > Perhaps Debian just doesn't generate as many auth or authpriv logs? > They should only occur during logins and the like. See what happens > if you do this: > > echo Blah |logger -t Testlog -p authpriv.info > > That works as expected on my 2.2.13 system when I set things up like > you have. Did you remember to restart syslogd after changing its > conf. file? > > -Kevin
