inittab ignored by reboot / halt

[Chris Craig]

Denys Vlasenko wrote:
 >> # Must be first 'respawn' or 'askfirst' entry to avoid ^C problem
 >
 > BTW: what is "^C problem" ?

I'm not sure, that comment was a leftover from copying parts of this 
inittab at some point:
http://wiki.dns323.info/information:dlink_files:102b114:etc:initab

You're right though it shouldn't be there. I think I left it in to scare 
the other developers away from mucking with inittab.

 >> When I type "halt" or "reboot" at a prompt, it just returns to the
 >> prompt.
 >
 > It just sends SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2 or SIGTERM to init.
 > If nothing happens, it means init did not react correctly
 > to these signals.

Yes, I had tried killing init with those signals to no effect also.

 >> Am I wrong in assuming that halt and reboot should perform the
 >> actions specified in the shutdown/restart lines of inittab,
 >> respectively?
 >
 > Yes.
 >
 > You need to debug init. This is the signal handler in init.c which
 > should trigger by these signals. Add debug code as shown below:
<snip>
 > What do you see in /somewhere/init.log after unsuccessful reboot
 > without -f?

Actually the problem turned out to be that I had enabled 
CONFIG_DEBUG_INIT, bypassing all the signal handling. Would it be 
helpful to have a message indicating that signals will be ignored if 
this is enabled?

-- 
Chris Craig
Microtronix Datacom Ltd.
9-1510 Woodcock Street
London ON  N6H 5S1
Canada
Phone:  (519) 690-0091 x253
http://microtronix.com