Creating Your Own Virtual Controllers and Devices

You can create your own virtual controllers and devices (terminals); however, you must use the same naming conventions as the automatic controller and device creation support. You may want to create the virtual terminal descriptions to control the number of sign-on attempts possible by not allowing automatic configuration of virtual terminals (which allows additional sign-on attempts to occur). See Security Considerations for additional information.

If you do not want to use automatically created descriptions, do the following:

Use the Create Controller Description (Virtual Work Station) (CRTCTLVWS) command to create a controller description for a virtual terminal.
```
CRTCTLVWS CTLD(QPACTL01)
          TEXT('Virtual Controller for virtual terminals')
```
Note: You must use the IBM^® i naming convention, QPACTLnn, for naming virtual controllers, where nn is a decimal number starting at 01.

Use the Create Device Description (Display) (CRTDEVDSP) command to create a virtual terminal as follows:

CRTDEVDSP DEVD(QPADEV0001) DEVCLS(*VRT)
          TYPE(5251) MODEL(11) CTL(QPACTL01)
          TEXT('24 X 80 Monochrome
             Display for Server Program')

The IBM i operating system automatically varies on the controller and terminal that you have created. You must use the IBM i naming convention, QPADEVxxxx, for naming virtual device descriptions, where xxxx are alphanumeric characters from 0000 to ZZZZ.

After creating the descriptions, you must authorize the server program to use them. Use the Grant Object Authority (GRTOBJAUT) command to authorize the user profile used by the server program to the descriptions. This can be done using the following commands:

GRTOBJAUT OBJ(QPACTL01) OBJTYPE(*CTLD)
          AUT(*CHANGE) USER(user-ID)

GRTOBJAUT OBJ(QPADEV0001) OBJTYPE(*DEVD)
          AUT(*CHANGE) USER(user-ID)

You may want to prevent virtual terminals from being created automatically. To do this, set the QAUTOVRT system value to 0 as follows:

CHGSYSVAL SYSVAL(QAUTOVRT) VALUE(0)

See Step 1: Setting the Number of Automatically Created Virtual Terminals for additional information.

Note: Changing this system value affects other products and programs that require automatic configuration. This includes TELNET, 5250 display station pass-through, and any other programs using the virtual terminal APIs.

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