FW: busybox init not launching one inittab process

[Erik L. Smith]

Posted to the wrong list initially. 
-----Original Message-----
From: Erik L. Smith 
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 7:06 PM
To: uclibc at uclibc.org
Subject: busybox init not launching one inittab process

I am having a problem with init processing getting to run a serial
console. I have built busybox against uclibc 0.9.28 for the i386
architecture which runs on a micro-ITX motherboard using a VIA chipset.
The serial port is COM2 (ttyS1). Whenever the OS comes alive and I log
in I do a ps of all processes and see that everything else in initab is
running (aside from the getty for the tty I happen to login to).
However, the getty for the serial console never runs. 

ttyS1::respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS1 115200 vt100

After the server comes online, I can send a 'init -q' or 'kill -HUP 1'
to restart init and suddenly a getty process shows up just like it
appears in /etc/inittab. I have tried changing the parameters and
changing the line structure but none affect the results. I tried the
following - 

ttyS1::respawn:/sbin/getty ttyS1 115200 vt100
ttyS1::respawn:/sbin/getty -L 115200 ttyS1 vt100
::respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS1 115200 vt100
null::respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS1 115200 vt100

all of the above fail to launch on their own but subsequently launch
correctly on a restart of init. 

Please help if you know where I have gone wrong. I would like getty to
spawn on its own on startup. What gross conceptual error am I having or
am failing to grasp? 

Erik Smith
Network Engineer
Senior Systems Engineer
Bluegrass.Net