[H-GEN] getty and login and things

[Allen Grace]

(Note reply-to: being general at humbug.org.au vs Allen Grace <s336357 at student.uq.edu.au>)

Evening all

I could probably figure this out without having to come asking for help
if I spent some more time with it, but it's starting to get up my nose. 

While tinkering last Saturday afternoon, I managed to do something to
the login process, so that logins are impossible in any runlevel except
first.

Three cases:
1. boot to single user, run login: everything is fine.
2. boot to runlevels 3 or 5 directly (i.e. standard boot): login accepts
username, asks for password, and never returns *if I enter the correct
password*.
3. boot to single user, telinit 3: the following happens

	sporty login: allen
			sh: allen: command not found
	bash#

Do I understand from this that getty has passed the username directly to
/bin/sh without trying to run login?

Snip from /etc/inittab:
1:12345:respawn:/sbin/getty tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty tty2
etc nothing exceptional here

And the default line in /etc/gettydefs, which is unchanged:
VC# B9600 SANE CLOCAL # B9600 SANE -ISTRIP CLOCAL #@S login: #VC

I didn't actually discover the problem until Monday, by which time I
couldn't really remember all the things I played with on Saturday. I
know that I spent quite a while seeing what all the things under /var
were for... is there something there that I should be looking at?

cheers for any advice

allen
--
PD: pardon of my horror syntax english. you must be patient with me.

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