console

1. The operator's station of a mainframe. In times past,

this was a privileged location that conveyed godlike powers to

anyone with fingers on its keys. Under Unix and other

modern time-sharing operating systems, such privileges are

guarded by passwords instead, and the console is just the

tty the system was booted from. Some of the mystique

remains, however, and it is traditional for sysadmins to

post urgent messages to all users from the console (on Unix,

/dev/console).

2. On microcomputer Unix boxes, the main screen and

keyboard (as opposed to character-only terminals talking to a

serial port). Typically only the console can do real

graphics or run X. See also CTY.

[Jargon File]