🚀 go-pugleaf

Martin Liddle wrote:
> 
<snip>
> On the other PC attempting to run a
> getty on either the standard serial port or the Specialix fails with the
> "..respawning too fast.   Disabled for 5 minutes" message.
<snip>

I have seen a similar message on SCO OpenServer 5.0.x systems. I had a look
at the SCO Technical Articles (http://www.sco.com/ta) using the keywords
"respawn" and "getty". Here are the top 2 suggestions for the cause of the
error. (Their relevance to Linux may be questionable: see what you think.)

1. /etc/inittab contains duplicate entries. getty cannot successfully start
when another getty is already running on the line. To fix: edit /etc/inittab
by hand and remove the offending entry. Check /etc/conf/cf.d/init.base and
the files in /etc/conf/init.d to make sure they do not also contain the
duplicate entry. 
[I am not overly familiar with Linux so the /etc/conf/cf.d/init.base and
/etc/conf/init.d pathnames may not apply...]

2. /etc/getty has somehow become corrupted. To quickly check whether getty
is working, run the command: 
   getty -c /etc/gettydefs
If this produces a large amount of output showing the contents of
/etc/gettydefs then getty is probably OK.  It is not possible to check
getty's checksum because the file is serialized.
<obviously SCO specific getty recovery stuff removed>

-- 
Richard Howlett

mailto:richard@howie.org.uk