The NULL TTY Driver Is Coming To The Linux 5.2 Kernel

While initially some questions were raised over the usefulness and practicality of this driver when it was first proposed on the kernel mailing list, the NULL TTY driver is set to make its maiden voyage to mainline with the upcoming Linux 5.2 kernel cycle.

The NULL TTY driver is intended for use-cases where no console driver is present/enabled as intended or otherwise. For init scripts and programs attempting to access /dev/console, it will error out while attempts like linking the console device to /dev/null will cause issues depending upon usage since it doesn't behave like a TTY.

So should no TTY console driver be present/enabled, the NULL TTY driver will provide a dummy console where all writes are simply discarded. This can also be tested via booting the kernel with console=ttynull for forcing this 124 lines of code driver.

This simply dummy driver is queued as part of tty-next for the upcoming Linux 5.2 cycle.