INIT: Command is respawning too rapidly...

[Fred Walter]

sgren at dynas.se (Johannes Sjogren) writes:
>cpcahil at virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill) writes:
>>moore at forty2.enet.dec.com (Paul Moore) writes:
>>>help me with this problem when I boot up my ISC-based system. I get
>>>the following series of messages displayed on the terminal:
>>>    INIT: Command is respawning too rapidly. Check for possible errors
>>>    id: co "/etc/getty console console"
>
>I have just recently had exactly the same problem. Init complained about all
>my getty:s, on both console, vtxx and ttyd0.

Did your /etc/inittab file have two or more entries with the same 'unique'
identifier ? A friend's Interactive Unix had the init problem, and when 
the 'unique' identifiers (which came that way right out of the box, if you
used the menu during the install to setup the serial ports a certain way)
where changed so they really were unique, the problem went away. It was
*very* annoying that it came out of the box with this problem. Not to
mention sendmail kept on respawning (until it was ripped out and replaced
with smail 3.1.19). Not to mention mailx will dump core when you try to
respond to certain mail addresses (that mail will correctly respond to). 
Not to mention ...

Grrr... But once all the problem software was worked around (or ripped out
and replaced) it's pretty nice.

	fred
>I booted my system from floppy and changed the initdefault entry in
>/etc/inittab to 's'. After this I was able to reboot from the hard disk
>and get the system up in single user mode. If I tried doing "init 2" to get
>to multiuser I just ended up in respawning getty-land again..
>
>>The proble is probably one of the following:
>>
>>	1. /etc/getty is gone
>>	2. /etc/gettydefs is corrupted (or at least the console, vt01 and vt02
>>	   entries are trashed)
>
>They seemed Ok on my system. I tried starting a getty manually 
>("/etc/getty /dev/vt01") and it started up OK and prompted on the expected
>virtual terminal (vt01).
>
>>	3. /dev/console is gone or has the incorrect device numbers
>
>Both /dev/console and /dev/vtxx were OK.
>
>>	4. /unix is screwed up (I would only suspect this if you recently 
>>	   made a new unix, or suffered some sort of system crash)
>
>I thought my /unix could be damaged so I replaced it with an old one. No 
>change. 
>
>I also tried reinstalling the core floppys. This didn't work either.
>Finally I ended up doing a full re-install. Now it seem to work.
>-- 
>  Johannes Sjogren				sgren at dynas.se
>  DynaSoft, Dynamic Software AB			Phone: +46-8-726 85 60
>  Liljeholmsv 10, S-117 61 STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN	Fax: +46-8-18 11 45


-- 
School address : grwalter at watmath.waterloo.edu
Home   address : watmath.uwaterloo.ca!xenitec!walter!fred

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