Get Back your Virtual Terminals

One of my favorite productivity tools in Linux are virtual terminals (you know, the six terminal screens you can get by pressing ALT+CTL+F1 - F6). Unfortunately, they seem to be disabled by default in Mandriva 2006.

To get them back, you need to edit the /etc/inittab file. Specifically, you need to either uncomment or add the following lines:

# Run gettys in standard runlevels
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

Be warned, each getty consumes system resources. If you are running low, comment out a few of the terminals.

OK, now back to work!