inittab problem--what resets it?
dan j
I've set something that prevents a console window from coming up at
boot time.
These lines in /etc/inittab
tty0:2:respawn:/usr/sbin/getty /dev/tty0
cons:0123456789:respawn:/usr/sbin/getty /dev/console
are overwritten upon reboot and become
tty0:2:off:/usr/sbin/getty /dev/tty0
cons:0123456789:off:/usr/sbin/getty /dev/console
The result is the system hangs without presenting a login prompt.
Fortunately I can still telnet in. When I then modify the lines with
chitab, changing "off" to "respawn," the system finally presents the
expected login prompt. But upon rebooting, the system again comes up
with the lines set to "off" and offers no login prompt. It's a
willful beast.
Does anyone know what is doing this and how to make it right? I was
exploring the /etc/security files and may have done something rash
there. But the only thing I've done in smit was change the login
defaults for root.
Many thanks,
dan j
LAIX Software Consulting
Dan,
First thing... If the console is tty0, why run two getty's - one
on tty0 and one on console? How about:
chdev -l tty0 -a login=disable
chcons /dev/tty0 -a login=enable
Regards,
Paul L.
Laurent-jan Dullaart
"dan j" <djac...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>
> I've set something that prevents a console window from coming up at
> boot time.
>
> These lines in /etc/inittab
>
> tty0:2:respawn:/usr/sbin/getty /dev/tty0
> cons:0123456789:respawn:/usr/sbin/getty /dev/console
>
> are overwritten upon reboot and become
>
> tty0:2:off:/usr/sbin/getty /dev/tty0
> cons:0123456789:off:/usr/sbin/getty /dev/console
>
> The result is the system hangs without presenting a login prompt.
> Fortunately I can still telnet in. When I then modify the lines with
> chitab, changing "off" to "respawn," the system finally presents the
> expected login prompt. But upon rebooting, the system again comes up
> with the lines set to "off" and offers no login prompt. It's a
> willful beast.
>
> Does anyone know what is doing this and how to make it right? I was
> exploring the /etc/security files and may have done something rash
> there. But the only thing I've done in smit was change the login
> defaults for root.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> dan j
Welcome to the horrors of the ODM. You're probably running 3.2.5.
The inittab is restored from the ODM at boot-time. Check out mkitab.
ljm
Scott L. Fields
Laurent-jan Dullaart wrote:
Uh, NO. This is actually a TTY issue, and only partially related to
ODM. When the TTY system is configured upon bootup, it also sets all
of it's entries in inittab to the values that are specified in ODM.
This goes for the console as well.
I assume that tty0 is actually the system console. If you want to
have the system console have a login prompt, then simply change the
console to be auto-login enabled (ie, "chcons" command).
"mkitab", "chitab", and other inittab commands should only be used
for entries in inittab that start system resources or script, not
TTY type resources.
The above applies to AIX 3.2, 4.1, and 4.2. This is not a 3.2 specific
issue.
David L. Crow
Laurent-jan Dullaart <l...@xs4all.nl> writes:
>Welcome to the horrors of the ODM. You're probably running 3.2.5.
>The inittab is restored from the ODM at boot-time. Check out mkitab.
The entire inittab file is NOT reconstructed from the ODM at
reboot. I can successfully create entries in inittab without using
the mkitab command that will last just fine through reboots. The
mkitab command is a helper that allows easier editting of inittab from
shell scripts. It does proper file locking and allows you to easily
create inittab entries after other ones without having to worry about
using sed, awk, or ed or the state of the existing inittab.
That said, there are several inittab items relating to devices that
will get rewritten so that they match the device's configuration. As
seen in the description previous in this thread, tty's and the console
are such devices.
--
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David L. Crow http://www.cactus.org/~crow (internet)
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