Reloading inittab / stopping respawn

[Bruce]

I am setting up a linux (debian 2.2) box as a fax server, using efax,
to automatically receive incoming fax calls. This is done by putting a
line in /etc/inittab such as the following (according to the efax man
page):

S0:23:respawn:/bin/sh /usr/bin/fax answer

How do you reload /etc/inittab short of rebooting? I have seen various
suggestions which, from what I can understand in the appropriate
documentation, are supposed to do this (kill -1 1; telinit Q), but
nothing short of rebooting seemed to do the trick.

Related to this; how do you stop the "respawn" process above?

Thanks in advance,

Bruce

--
_________________________
Bruce Best
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA

westmor...@hotmail.com
___________________________________________

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[lcs...@my-deja.com]

In article <8invhj$9dc$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,

never tried debian, but I'll take a shot...

Bruce <westmor...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I am setting up a linux (debian 2.2) box as a fax server, using efax,
> to automatically receive incoming fax calls. This is done by putting a
> line in /etc/inittab such as the following (according to the efax man
> page):
>
> S0:23:respawn:/bin/sh /usr/bin/fax answer
>
> How do you reload /etc/inittab short of rebooting?

telinit

or

init q

or

kill -HUP 1

should all work. Try 'man init' for your system.

>
> Related to this; how do you stop the "respawn" process above?
>

Change the 'respawn' in /etc/inittab or remark the line out and
resource inittab (kill -HUP 1). For that type of app,
'respawn' is probably the right option. A problem arises when
/usr/bin/fax bails immediately after being launched by init which
causes init to launch another fax which bails, etc. When
that happens, init will eventually refuse to respawn the program
for several minutes because... well, because it has better things
to do. The question is: why is 'fax' bailing so quickly? It should
wait around until someone calls. Perhaps there's a conflict with
another program over the modem port? Perhaps the configuration
file for /usr/bin/fax is wrong? The best way I know of to find out
what the problem is is to do what init does from the command-line
and see what happens:

% su
Password? ******
% /usr/bin/fax answer

The program should just sit there waiting for someone to call. After
someone calls, the program should exit back to the shell prompt. At
this point, init would respawn the program for the next call.

When you start fax manually, does it wait for a call or exit with
some error message? If error, correct the problem and try again.
Once you've got fax working properly from the command-line, you
can probably add it back to inittab and resource init without having
fax respawn 200 times.

A couple of things to watch out for. Many inittabs include an entry
for getty or mgetty to allow remote logins over a serial port. That
could lead to a port conflict with fax. Make sure there are no entries
in inittab that use the same port. If you do have an entry for...
say... getty that uses the same port, remark it out of inittab and:

kill -HUP 1
ps aux | grep getty
kill <pid of getty>

If you don't remove getty from inittab, killing it will just cause
init to respawn a new one. Same thing it's trying to do with fax.

Hope this helps.

[Bruce]

In article <8io98h$hvj$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,

lcs...@my-deja.com wrote:
> In article <8invhj$9dc$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>
> never tried debian, but I'll take a shot...
>
> Bruce <westmor...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I am setting up a linux (debian 2.2) box as a fax server, using
efax,

<snip>

> > How do you reload /etc/inittab short of rebooting?
>
> telinit
>
> or
>
> init q
>
> or
>
> kill -HUP 1
>
> should all work. Try 'man init' for your system.
>

'man telinit' suggested 'telinit Q', which didn't seem to work. I'll
try the other commands as well.

The 'fax answer' getty works fine; I was going to experiment with
hylafax, and wanted to know how to temporarily disable that getty 'fax
answer' (which you answered for me above).

Thanks for the suggestions.

--
_________________________
Bruce Best
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA

westmor...@hotmail.com
___________________________________________

[David ..]

Bruce wrote:
>
> I am setting up a linux (debian 2.2) box as a fax server, using efax,

> to automatically receive incoming fax calls. This is done by putting a
> line in /etc/inittab such as the following (according to the efax man
> page):
>
> S0:23:respawn:/bin/sh /usr/bin/fax answer
>

> How do you reload /etc/inittab short of rebooting? I have seen various
> suggestions which, from what I can understand in the appropriate
> documentation, are supposed to do this (kill -1 1; telinit Q), but
> nothing short of rebooting seemed to do the trick.
>

> Related to this; how do you stop the "respawn" process above?
>

/sbin/init q

--
Registered with the Linux Counter. http://counter.li.org
ID # 123538

[Craig Kelley]

Bruce <westmor...@hotmail.com> writes:

> I am setting up a linux (debian 2.2) box as a fax server, using efax,
> to automatically receive incoming fax calls. This is done by putting a
> line in /etc/inittab such as the following (according to the efax man
> page):
>
> S0:23:respawn:/bin/sh /usr/bin/fax answer
>
> How do you reload /etc/inittab short of rebooting? I have seen various
> suggestions which, from what I can understand in the appropriate
> documentation, are supposed to do this (kill -1 1; telinit Q), but
> nothing short of rebooting seemed to do the trick.
>
> Related to this; how do you stop the "respawn" process above?

from `man init`:

To provide for an instantaneous response, the telinit Q or q
command can wake up init to re-examine the /etc/inittab file.

So, if that doesn't work for you than I'd say your init is broken(?).
I use it all the time without any problem (RedHat 6.2).

--
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
Craig Kelley -- kell...@isu.edu
http://www.isu.edu/~kellcrai finger i...@inconnu.isu.edu for PGP block