Hi all. Ex uses the first undefined console. So if you have 6 text consoles defined, then ex will use /dev/tty7. If you have 12 text consoles defined, then ex will use /dev/tty13, etc. If you leave a text console undefined in the middle of a sequence of text console definitions, then ex will use that one, since it was the first available undefined console. You can actually have up to 64 text consoles defined in /dev/inittab, and access them with alt f1 through f12, shift f1 through f12, control f1 through f12, etc. I find that the 6 text consoles that are usually with most distributions are enough for me. I usually login to the first five text consoles as myself, and the last one as root. I usually run the Speak Freely software for the reflecter on tty1, and just use the others as needed. As an asside, I've found an application called vcstime, which displays the system time on all defined system consoles. You run it in the background as root, and it displays the time in the top right corner of each text console. Speakup works very nicely with it. That is, speakup does not constantly reread the running clock on the top line of the screen, but will happily read it on demand. It also works nicely with brltty. Gene
