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.TH grab_vcsa 1 "22 jan 2006" "Free Pascal" "Linux console vcsa grabber"
.SH NAME
grab_vcsa \- Linux console vcsa grabber
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B "grab_vcsa"
.BR
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.I Linux
console allows text mode
.I video buffer access^\fR. For each tty device
(/dev/tty0..31) there exist two devices (/dev/vcs0..31) and (/dev/vcsa0..31).
These devices are two different representations of the content of the console.
When you login on the Linux console, your tty device is changed owner to you,
so you can read/write it. When you logout it is takes from you. This does not
happen with the vcs and vcsa devices, i.e. you cannot access the video buffer
of your own tty.
Unfortunately there is a lot of reason to use the text mode video buffer. For
instance, it is not possible to get access to the full 256 characters the VGA
adapter can display without using the text mode video buffer (Linux emulates
the vt100 character set which does not have all VGA characters). This
annoyance severely limits the porting possibilities to Linux of software
that was written with a VGA character set in mind.
.B grab_vcsa
is a setuid root program that, when called will change the owner of the vcs
and vcsa devices to you, after a series of security checks have been performed.
It is not necessary to change the permissions back again (this would be pointless
since a user could kill a imaginary release_vcsa program before it can do its
work). The permissions are automatically reverted on logout.
.B grab_vcsa
is used by the Free Pascal video unit. The video unit allows programmers to
develop portable programs accross Dos, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, OS/2 and
other operating systems while they can still assume being able to use the
full VGA character set.
.SH RETURN CODES
.B grab_vcsa
has the following return codes:
.TP
.BR 0
Success
.TP
.BR 1
You are not running on the Linux console
.TP
.BR 2
Error while statting tty.
.TP
.BR 3
Error while executing chown.
.TP
.BR 4
Error while executing chmod.
.TP
.BR 4
You do not own your own tty.
.SH AUTHOR
Daniel Mantione <daniel.mantione@freepascal.org>
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