securetty(5)

📦
version 6.20 · 13 versions
, in arch rolling, nixpkgs unstable

🎀 NAME 🎀

okay so bestie, you're reading securetty(5) — a File Formats Manual page, no big deal — and it's literally about securetty, the list of terminals on which root is allowed to login. Periodt. 💅

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

The file /etc/securetty contains the names of terminals (one per line, without leading /dev/) which are considered secure for the transmission of certain authentication tokens. Like, each terminal gets its own lil line, and you do not put the leading /dev/ — leave that part out, bestie. 🫶

It is used by (some versions of) login(1) to restrict the terminals on which root is allowed to login. See login.defs(5) if you use the shadow suite. 👑

On PAM enabled systems, it is used for the same purpose by pam_securetty(8) to restrict the terminals on which empty passwords are accepted. ✨

📁 FILES 📁

  • /etc/securetty

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

mwah 💋 this page is from Linux man-pages 6.20, dated 2025-05-17, and yeah it's securetty(5) — slay. 🦋

📦 where this page comes from
  • arch rolling: man-pages 6.20-1 · BSD-2-Clause AND BSD-3-Clause AND BSD-4.3TAHOE AND BSD-4-Clause-UC AND GPL-1.0-or-later AND GPL-2.0-only AND GPL-2.0-or-later AND GPL-3.0-or-later AND LGPL-3.0-linking-exception AND LGPL-3.0-or-later AND LicenseRef-Public-Domain AND LicenseRef-UltraPermissive AND Linux-man-pages-1-para AND Linux-man-pages-copyleft AND Linux-man-pages-copyleft-2-para AND Linux-man-pages-copyleft-var AND MIT AND Spencer-94
  • nixpkgs unstable: man-pages 6.20
  • 📜 the page's license: GPL-2.0-or-later
  • 💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms