I'd like to use a different tty program than agetty on my debian jessie machine (specifically, qingy). The tty creation is controlled by systemd via the (auto-created as I understand) /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty1.service
What is the "systemd way" for modifying/controlling/replacing agetty as my default tty?
The systemd way is to create a service template that starts your alternative TTY login service …
[Unit] Description=Qingy on %I Documentation=info:qingy BindTo=dev-%i.device After=dev-%i.device systemd-user-sessions.service plymouth-quit-wait.service [Service] Environment=TERM=linux ExecStart=/sbin/qingy %I --no-shutdown-screen Restart=always RestartSec=0 UtmpIdentifier=%I TTYPath=/dev/%I TTYReset=yes TTYVHangup=yes TTYVTDisallocate=yes KillMode=process IgnoreSIGPIPE=no KillSignal=SIGHUP [Install] WantedBy=getty.target
… and then to make sure that the autovt@.service template is an alias for this instead of for getty@.service, as it is out of the box.
ln -s qingy@.service /etc/systemd/system/autovt@.service systemctl daemon-reload
(Note that this is not modifying the pre-packaged /lib/systemd/system/autovt@.service that comes in the box. This is using systemd's conventional /etc//lib dichotomy to override it with a local, administrator-defined, one.)
Stop an existing autovt@ttyN.service and let logind auto-start it again, to see this take effect.
