ttytype(5)

💖 ttytype — the girlies' guide to /etc/ttytype 💖

okay so bestie, you found the ttytype page in the File Formats Manual section of the ttytype(5) docs, and honestly? it's a little vintage treasure 🎀 let's get into it.

✨ NAME ✨

ttytype — terminal device to default terminal type mapping. that's it, that's the whole vibe: it's the lil matchmaker between your tty line and what terminal type it should pretend to be 💅

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so the file /etc/ttytype is out here doing matchmaking 💖 it hooks up termcap(5) and terminfo(5) terminal type names with tty lines. like, it's setting them up on a date.

each line in the file is giving a very specific format, no room for chaos:

• a terminal type first
• then some whitespace (breathe, girl, add a space)
• then a tty name — and NOT the full path, it's the device name without the /dev/ prefix. so like tty1, not /dev/tty1. important ✨

and who actually uses this association? that would be tset(1) 👑 it reads the file so it can set the environment variable TERM to the default terminal name for whatever tty the user is currently on. main character energy fr fr.

now, real talk 🫶 this whole facility was designed way back for a traditional time-sharing environment — think character-cell terminals hardwired to a UNIX minicomputer. it's giving museum. 🏛️ and ngl, it's little used on modern workstation and personal UNIX systems. so if you're on your lil laptop, this file is probably just sitting there being decorative 💀

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• /etc/ttytype — the tty definitions file. the one and only, the icon, the blueprint 💅

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

a typical /etc/ttytype looks exactly like this, no cap:

con80x25 tty1
vt320 ttys0

see how it's just type + space + tty name? so clean, so iconic ✨

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• termcap(5)
• terminfo(5)
• agetty(8)
• minggetty(8)

go read those next bestie, they're the rest of the lore 🦋

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and that's the page!! this diva of a doc came from Linux man-pages 6.20, dated 2025-05-17 — yeah she's fresh, she's stamped, she's slaying 💜 mwah, go touch grass and set your TERM correctly 🍓✨