inittab ignored by reboot / halt

[Chris Craig]

I'm helping to develop a MPC8XX-based board that uses a basic 
filesystem, kernel 2.6.12 and busybox v1.11.2, and am having problems 
with halt and reboot. Neither of those commands seem to be using the 
actions specified in inittab. Here's the contents of inittab:

---------- /etc/inittab ----------
# This is run first
::sysinit:/etc/init.d/rcS

# /bin/login invocation on the console
# Must be first 'respawn' or 'askfirst' entry to avoid ^C problem
::askfirst:/sbin/getty 9600 ttyS0

# multi-user script (network, daemons, etc)
::once:/etc/init.d/rcM

::shutdown:/etc/init.d/rc0
::restart:/etc/init.d/rc6
----------------------------------

On boot I get the following messages, which suggest to me that the 
actions are initialized:

---------- boot messages ----------
init started: BusyBox v1.11.2 (2008-09-19 11:39:25 EDT)
command='/etc/init.d/rcS' action=1 tty=''

command='/sbin/getty 9600 ttyS0' action=4 tty=''

command='/etc/init.d/rcM' action=16 tty=''

command='/etc/init.d/rc0' action=64 tty=''

command='/etc/init.d/rc6' action=128 tty=''


Please press Enter to activate this console.
-----------------------------------

Now the rcS script runs fine, the rcM script also runs fine (it actually 
checks a uBoot environment variable called "syslevel" to see if it 
should bail out), and getty runs fine.

When I type "halt" or "reboot" at a prompt, it just returns to the 
prompt. If I run "halt -f" or "reboot -f" the system reboots fine, and 
if I run the rc0 script manually it does the needful (aside: my in-laws 
are from India).

Am I wrong in assuming that halt and reboot should perform the actions 
specified in the shutdown/restart lines of inittab, respectively?

-- 
Chris Craig
Microtronix Datacom Ltd.
9-1510 Woodcock Street
London ON  N6H 5S1
Canada
Phone:  (519) 690-0091 x253
http://microtronix.com