getty login getty login

[bill]

About a week ago I posted an article about a problem on V/AT I was
having installing an internal modem. I added a line to /etc/inittab
like "t0:1234:respawn:/etc/getty ttyM0 1200" and rebooted. The 
system would cycle between getty-login-getty-login ... at about
20 second intervals. I took a look at the /etc/wtmp file and
matched it up against the description in the "file formats" 
section of the software development volume II. The login was
always failing with a 15 (decimal) in the "e_terminate" field.
(See the 017 in 03740). 

0003620  \0  \0  \0  \0 033   V 224   "   L   O   G   I   N  \0  \0  \0
0003640   t   0  \0  \0   t   t   y   M   0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0
0003660   i  \0 006  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0 033   V 224   "   L   O   G   I
0003700   N  \0  \0  \0   t   0  \0  \0   t   t   y   M   0  \0  \0  \0
0003720  \0  \0  \0  \0   i  \0  \b  \0 017  \0  \0  \0   /   V 224   "
0003740   g   e   t   t   y  \0  \0  \0   t   0  \0  \0   t   t   y   M
0003760   0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0   k  \0 005  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0
--etc--
--etc--

So my first question is what exactly this field represents in the
record (it is different than "e_exit"). The 20 seconds and the 
15 look a lot like the 20 seconds and SIGTERM that's described 
at the end of init(1).   

Now here is the latest information. I installed the "sysvision" disk
and actually went through the terminal installation menu. I told it that I
wanted to install "t0" - the line in the /etc/inttab file for ttyM0.
Then I shutdown and rebooted from scratch. Suddenly everything is
working fine... If you take a look at /etc/inittab, sysviz has added
the same identical line that I added, except that it is in triplicate.
(Yes, it's in there three times in a row!).  This implies to me
that the author of sysviz knows something I don't (not suprising...).

Ideas?

And thanx to everyone that sent me their thoughts last time. 
-- 
Bill Mahoney
...ihnp4!unocss!ugn!zycor!bill
In space, no one can hear you think.