start program instead of login prompt

Hi all,

I have this little problem: for a somewhat embedded linux system I
require the system on console tty1 NOT to display a login prompt, but to
start a shell script with a certain user and group ID.

Alas my changings in /etc/inittab didn't produce any useful result
(terminal tty1 was just unusable after that :-) so I'm asking here.

What do I have to do to achieve an autologin on console 1 with a certain
user and to execute a program afterwards - automatically?


Thanks in advance for any help & greetings,

Axel.

Axel Bock <axel@romteck.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have this little problem: for a somewhat embedded linux system I
> require the system on console tty1 NOT to display a login prompt, but to
> start a shell script with a certain user and group ID.

You want to use rungetty. Don't just change /etc/inittab to run another
program, because there are terminal issues, such as carriage return
sequences. You'll find that if you don't use rungetty, you may very well
get stair-stepping.

--
Cameron Kerr
cameron.kerr@paradise.net.nz : http://nzgeeks.org/cameron/
Empowered by Perl!

Axel Bock wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have this little problem: for a somewhat embedded linux system I
> require the system on console tty1 NOT to display a login prompt, but to
> start a shell script with a certain user and group ID.
>
> Alas my changings in /etc/inittab didn't produce any useful result
> (terminal tty1 was just unusable after that :-) so I'm asking here.
>
> What do I have to do to achieve an autologin on console 1 with a certain
> user and to execute a program afterwards - automatically?
>
>
> Thanks in advance for any help & greetings,
>
> Axel.

You were along the right lines. If you don't want the login prompt, you
will need to look at /etc/inittab to do this for you. Basically just
remove the gettys - 'man inittab'.

If you then want to start a script, have a look at rc. This varies
(greatly sometimes) between distributions but you can look for its path
in /etc/inittab for a lead. It is then up to the script to then drop
privileges (from root).

--
Ben M.

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