[Gllug] Spawning too fast

[George Saxby]

John,
 sorry but the grep renders nothing by way of a reply.
I am not trying any kind of serial port connection however it seems the
machine thinks I want to.
I have no Toms here will wait till later things just went crazy Friday
stuff here.

George F. Saxby
    Systems Engineer
       I.T.S. Team

>>> john_ed at cornerstonelinux.co.uk 02/08/02 12:31pm >>>
On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 10:30:02AM +0000, George Saxby wrote:
> hi,
>  well after a very enjoyable double meal at the Thai Canteen with
"the
> mustgettheres". It is time to get back to the harsh reality of
debian.
> 
>        After a few moments I get an error on any text consol I am
> working on that says "S" is spawning too fast & is being shutting
down
> for 5 mins.
>   tracked this down to inittab and editted out the offending line:-
> 
>   S:12345:respawn:/sbin/getty ttyS1
> 
> by putting a # in the beggining.
> 
> However this ploy does not work even though immediately checking
after
> a save the line is editted, "the system" seems to re-write the file.
>          How do I make the edit stick OR just stop the "S" starting
up
> at all
> 
> TIA

Assuming that you are trying to setup a serial console on the second 
serial port (/dev/ttyS1), shouldn't the line in inittab be:
	S1:12345:respawn:/sbin/getty ttyS1

Or prehaps the machine does not have a second serial port, or that 
it is misconfigured. Try running:
	statserial /dev/ttyS1

If the port does not exist then you might get something like:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
statserial: TIOCMGET failed: Input/output error
----------------------------------------------------------------------


A working serial port should look something like:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Device: /dev/ttyS1

Signal  Pin  Pin  Direction  Status  Full
Name    (25) (9)  (computer)         Name
-----   ---  ---  ---------  ------  -----
FG	 1    -      -           -   Frame Ground
TxD	 2    3      out         -   Transmit Data
RxD	 3    2      in          -   Receive  Data
RTS	 4    7      out         1   Request To Send
CTS	 5    8      in          0   Clear To Send
DSR	 6    6      in          0   Data Set Ready
GND	 7    5      -           -   Signal Ground
DCD	 8    1      in          0   Data Carrier Detect
DTR     20    4      out         1   Data Terminal Ready
RI	22    9      in          0   Ring Indicator
----------------------------------------------------------------------


After changing inittab you need to get init to reread it by running 
"init q".If you are unable to save the file try booting with a rescue 
floppy/CDROM like tomsrtbt and then edit the file using that.

If something else is rewriting (or maybe locking) inittab, then you 
might be able to find it using:
	lsof | grep inittab


-- 
#------------------------------------------------------------#
|      John Edwards    Email: John.Edwards at uk.com            |
|                                                            |
|     "Security vulnerabilities are here to stay."           |
|   Scott Culp, Manager, Microsoft Security Response Center  |
#------------------------------------------------------------#

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