How to Disable TTY

At least one TTY terminal needs to run on the system.

TTY, or TeleTYpewriter, is the command line interface in the Unix/Linux operating system. By default, the operating system launches several sessions of TTY so the user can launch software from different TTYs or get several users to use their own TTY. Having several TTYs running can represent a security risk or even slow down the system on low-end machines. You can disable TTYs by editing files and rebooting the system.

Instructions

1. Launch a terminal in Linux.

2. Type "su," press "Enter," type your administrator password and press "Enter" again.

3. Type "gedit" if you are using the Gnome desktop or "Kedit" if you are using the KDE desktop. Press "Enter" to launch your text editor.

4. Click the "Open file" icon on your text editor. Navigate to "/etc" then "/default" and select the "console-setup" file.

5. Locate the "ACTIVE_CONSOLES" lines and change [1-6] to [1] to have only one terminal or [1-2] to have two terminals. Click "CTRL"+"S" to save the file.

6. Click the "Open file" icon and navigate to "/etc", then "/event.d".

7. Edit each of the "ttyX," where X represent the terminal number files for each of the TTYs you do not want launched. If you replace [1-6] with [1-2], edit the tty3 tty4 tty5 tty6 files.

8. Add the "#" character at the start of the first line. Save the file.

9. Close all the open software and save your work. Reboot the computer.

Tips & Warnings

• You can use the "Vi" editor to edit your files from the command line directly.

• You need to have administrator privileges to change the system files "console-setup" and"ttyX."

References

• Crunchbanglinux: HOWTO DISABLE EXTRA TTYS