What does “virtual consoles” in the ubuntu installer stand for?

Question

I am installing ubuntu server in a vmware vm. In the expert installer there is this question (i guess this is the same in the debian installer):

Please enter a space delimited list of virtual consoles you use

and the standard setting is:

/dev/tty[1-6]

I wonder if I can reduce this to maybe 1-2. I am not sure what it exactly means. I will only use one "physical" console for install one time and maybe later for emergencies, but normally only ssh remote login consoles.

Maybe this is related to this faq entry:

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Keyboard-and-Console-HOWTO.html#ss7.1

So my question is: what does it change if I reduce this to 1-2? I am wondering on each install.

EDIT: I selected this for my install:

/dev/tty[1-1]

But later on the running instance I got 6 consoles with Alt-1 .. Alt-6 on the vmware console nonetheless. Strange. There are 6 instances of "getty" showing up in the processlist.

EDIT 2: I should have added that this was the Ubuntu 10.04 server install Disk (i386) "Lucid Lynx" beta 2

Answer 1

Yes, it should be fine to reduce the number of virtual consoles. To access these consoles, you press Ctrl-Alt-Fx where by default, x=[1-6]. A separate logon shell is assigned to each of these VCs. If you don't need them, reducing the number should have no negative consequences.

Answer 2

Interesting, this has just taught me that init on Ubuntu (hardy at least) doesn't use /etc/inittab any more, it uses a service-per-file model via /etc/event.d/

Have a look in /etc/event.d - init reads this directory to work out what to start, there will be a file for each of your gettys running on tty[123456]. Remove the unnecessary tty* files and reboot, make sure you leave tty1 at least though!

I expected there to be a way to tell init to just re-read this directory, but all the normal ways of saying 'your configuration has changed', like 'kill -HUP 1' and 'init 2' did not work. Odd, this was normal when you had /etc/inittab. If anyone knows how to get init to reread this directory, please shout.