semantics of /dev/tty?

[Rahul Dhesi]

In article <1001 at auspex.UUCP> guy at auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes:
>"fstat" and "stat" don't go down to the device driver, so it has no
>opportunity to do the indirection for you.  This is almost certainly a
>feature, not a bug.

It is almost certainly a feature, not a bug, except in one situation.

That situation occurs when a site logs out idle users based on the
access time of each user's /dev/ttyxx device, and a user happens to be
using C-Kermit, which opens /dev/tty leaves /dev/ttyxx inactive during
file transfers.

There seems to be no way for a process (even a root process) to find
access/modification times for the /dev/tty of another process.  This
could be considered a bug.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi
                    ARPA:  bsu-cs!dhesi at iuvax.cs.indiana.edu