[BusyBox] question about inittab

[Geoffrey Espin]

On Fri, Apr 26, 2002 at 01:27:50PM -0400, trevor wrote:

> i have a couple more observations about inittab that i'd like to ask about. 
> "default" one, one with lines like:
> ::askfirst:/bin/sh
> tty2::askfirst:/bin/sh
> and the "device ... does not exist" problem is back. so i replaced those 
> lines with:
> ::askfirst:-/bin/sh
> tty2::askfirst:-/bin/sh

As the comments in init.c state, the dash is there to indicate
an interactive shell.  It may not strictly be necessary, but just
do it.  Again, by inspection of init.c, it appears that the
automatically generated inittab, although, documented to have
the entries you mention, looks like it will magically remove them --
see the code near the message: "serial console detected.  Disabling
virtual terminals.".

> and the problem is still there. if i delete (or move) the inittab file (so 
> the default is invokes) the problem goes away.
> if i remove the tty2-4 lines then the problem goes away, but then i only end 
> up with one console.

Because it does it magically when you use BB_FEATURE_USE_INITTAB.
If you don't have the devices in the filesystem yet put it in your
hard-coded /etc/inittab, what exactly do you expect?

> any ideas? as a work-around i guess i could just put a couple of lines in my 
> rcS file to create these nodes on bootup.

That might work.  Why not have them created statically 'a priori' in the fs?

] Do you use devfs? If you do, you have to change the tty2 to vc/2 because
] the virtual consoles are in a different place.  [Bart]

Yep, and this is _already_ done for you in libbb.h when you select
BB_FEATURE_DEVFS, which ought to match up with your actual kernel,
I suspect. :-)

Geoff
-- 
Geoffrey Espin
espin at idiom.com
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