mgetty spawning too fast? - SOLVED! (details inside)

mshack@mcs.com (mshack@mcs.com)
Thu, 4 Jan 1996 01:45:21 +0100


Thank you all for the informative help.  I thought you might
be interested in what the (of course stupid on my part) problem
was.

The log file was giving an error that /usr/spool/uucp/LCK..ttyS1 could
not be opened, and thus mgetty was blowing chow.  That's because
on RedHat, the Lock dir is /var/lock.  I fixed that and rebuilt, and
then the message about respawning too quickly, disabling for 5 minutes
went away.  Now, of course, it makes sense.  Init was spawning mgetty,
which was croaking immediately because it couldn't open
/usr/spool/uucp/LCK..ttyS1, and then Init would try and start it again,
etc. etc. etc., and thus, the respawning was taking place over and
over and over again, much too fast.  Makes perfect sense now.

That was the first problem.

The answer to the second problem (mgetty 0.22) was related to the
Zoom, and I didn't have &C1 sent down.  Gert was right on the money
on this one.  I did have &D2 sent down, and I have in the past found
that to be quite necessary for my Zoom.  And that was the second
problem.  

Now, thanks to you all, mgetty 0.98 is happily running again, and I
can dispose of 0.22.

Interesting point about the security hole (for non-root) in changing
the config directory on the command line.  Certainly, root should
be able to do it, if it's worth the trouble to code it in.  Might
be convenient.

Thanks again to everyone who responded.  Gert, thanks for letting
me know that 0.22 didn't have a config file.  I was going nuts trying
to find where to put it so it would be read!

Thanks again.

Mark