#4131 Mgetty does not run after being added to inittab

[David Lam]

After setting up a modem in "Serial Port Configuration" and clicking "Apply Configuration", mgetty does not run. The modules add an entry into /etc/inittab (2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mgetty ttyS0).

I'm running Webmin on a RHEL machine, and RHEL uses Upstart instead of SysV so adding jobs to the inittab file aren't read. Maybe a new file should be added to "/etc/init/"?

[Jamie Cameron]

Are you sure RHEL uses upstart? I'm pretty sure it is still using classic init.

Also, I'm surprised that anyone is still using a modem these days!

[David Lam]

Yea, RHEL 6 uses upstart. Here's some documentation from RH about it (https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Technical_Notes/deployment.html)

Dial-up modems are a throwback indeed.

[Jamie Cameron]

Thanks - I will take a look at RHEL 6 again. Most of my testing has been on CentOS 6, which is supposed to be a RHEL 6 clone ... but doesn't use upstart.

Does /etc/inittab contain anything on your system, other the mgetty line Webmin adds?

[Jamie Cameron]

My mistake - RHEL 6 and CentOS 6 really do use upstart, which does away with /etc/inittab, so adding mgetty lines to it won't work :-(