Right, well, I suppose I should answer my own question now that I've got
the answer.  It's a new-fangled way to do pseudo-terminals without having
to search through the individual pseudo terminals to find one that's
available.  It's used with /dev/ptmx. 

Both of these are now pretty much hidden behind openpty, however, which
can take care of that sort of stuff for you for the most part.

I found all this out by searching for ptmx, which is much less common a
letter combination than pts, and therefore only gave relevant results.  
Does anyone have a good source for *detailed* information on the /dev
directory?  Even the kernel documentation was only of limited help.

Dave

On Mon, 23 Apr 2001 JERRY_GREGORY at udlp.com wrote:

> I don't know where you can get info on what it is, BUT I can tell you how I use
> it.  I use pts-redir to redirect a ppp session to an ssh tunnel, thus creating a
> VPN link.  It's documented on linuxdoc.org in the VPN-HOWTO.  (pty-redir for
> previous releases was replaced by pty-redir in RH 7.0).
> 
> Jerry G.
> jerryg at msplink.com
> 
> ____________________Reply Separator____________________
> Subject:    [TCLUG-DEVEL] /dev/pts
> Author: David Christian <dchristian at macalester.edu>
> Date:       4/21/2001 11:28 AM
> 
> Does anyone know where I can get some good information on /dev/pts?
> 
> I know it does something with pseudo terminals but I don't quite
> understand it...
> 
> Thanks,
> Dave
> 
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