consadm selects the hardware device or devices to be used as auxiliary console devices, or displays the current device. Only superusers are allowed to make or display auxiliary console device selections.

Auxiliary console devices receive copies of console messages, and can be used as the console during single user mode. In particular, they receive kernel messages and messages directed to /dev/sysmsg. On Solaris or IA based systems they can also be used for interaction with the bootstrap.

By default, selecting a display device to be used as an auxiliary console device selects that device for the duration the system remains up. If the administrator needs the selection to persist across reboots the -p option can be specified.

consadm runs a daemon in the background, monitoring auxiliary console devices. Any devices that are disconnected (hang up, lose carrier) are removed from the auxiliary console device list, though not from the persistent list. While auxiliary console devices may have been removed from the device list receiving copies of console messages, those messages will always continue to be displayed by the default console device.

The daemon will not run if it finds there are not any auxiliary devices configured to monitor. Likewise, after the last auxiliary console is removed, the daemon will shut itself down. Therefore the daemon persists for only as long as auxiliary console devices remain active.

The following options are supported:

-a device

Adds device to the list of auxiliary console devices. Specify device as the path name to the device or devices to be added to the auxiliary console device list.

-d device

Removes device from the list of auxiliary console devices. Specify device as the path name to the device or devices to be removed from the auxiliary console device list.

-p

Prints the list of auxiliary consoles that will be auxiliary across reboots.

When invoked with the -a or -d options , tells the application to make the change persist across reboot.

See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of consadm: LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.

The following exit values are returned:

0

Successful completion.

>0

An error occurred.

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

eeprom(1M), syslogd(1M), kadb(1M), environ(5), attributes(5), sysmsg(7d), console(7d)

Auxiliary console devices are not usable for kadb or firmware I/O, do not receive panic messages, and do not receive output directed to /dev/console.