Upgrade to feisty causes loss of TTYs due to incorrect file mangling

[Trent Lloyd]

Binary package hint: upstart

I upgraded my machine to feisty and caused loss of TTYs, it mangled the tty1-tty6 files

The last line now reads

 "/sbin/getty 38400 tty2exec /sbin/getty 38400 tty2" (same for each different tty)

Which obviously is wrong, I suspect one of the upgrade scripts may have caused this

Now as a point I cannot remember if this machine was upgraded from dapper, or from edgy, I suspect it may have been dapper which could be the root of the problem, I realise that generally upgrading between releases is not supported but since 6.06 is LTS this may cause a bug when the next LTS comes out so could probably be fixed.

This is also really bad because you lose the TTY in recovery mode as well.

[Michael Wood (x3n)]

I have also experienced my tty's disappear after an upgrade from edgy, is there a work around ? any info i can provide ?

[Siep Kroonenberg (siepo)]

A workaround: fix the tty files manually. E.g., the last line of /etc/event.d/tty1 reads:

/sbin/getty 38400 tty1exec /sbin/getty 38400 tty1

Change this into

exec /sbin/getty 38400 tty1

Same for the other tty's. Then reboot.

[Michael Wood (x3n)]

Thanks that's done it

[Sven Sternberger (sven-sternberger)]

But I'm still interested, which package create these files? How
can I recreate the files, if i lost them.

I tried to reinstall several packages, but none of them creates
a missing ttyx file.

best regards!

sven

[Michael Wood (x3n)]

system-services package contains:

/etc/event.d/tty1
/etc/event.d/tty2
/etc/event.d/tty3
/etc/event.d/tty4
/etc/event.d/tty5
/etc/event.d/tty6

Maybe this bug should be moved in their direction

( apt-file search is your friend )

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

As an experiment (I know it's not supported) I did a Dapper --> Gutsy dist-upgrade yesterday and this problem is still present.

[Onno Benschop (onno-itmaze)]

Let me start with that I'm no expert on the installation system, but here's what I've learnt so far:

$dpkg -S tty1
system-services: /etc/event.d/tty1

$dpkg -L system-services
[..]
/usr/lib/upstart/migrate-inittab.pl
[..]

$cat /var/lib/dpkg/info/system-services.postinst
{confirms that /usr/lib/upstart/migrate-inittab.pl does the work}

That means to my mind that the error is very likely happening within migrate-inittab.pl

(Of course it may well be that this was obvious to all involved.)

I'll do some Perl RTFM-ing and see what I learn.

[Onno Benschop (onno-itmaze)]

Scott, in your Dapper --> Gutsy upgrade, could you please attach a copy of one of the tty{x} files. I'm trying to figure out which path it takes through the code and I really don't want to install Dapper, then migrate to Gutsy just to find out :)

[Alfrenovsky (alfredo-fing)]

Scott , I lost my consoles eht upgrading to gutsy but I noticed the "getty"s are running and my problem was the framebuffer.
I have and Intel 810 video board.

run a "pidof getty" or try to "cat things > /dev/tty1" just to be sure.

[Thomas Braun (grothesk)]

Experienced the same here on a upgrade from feisty to gutsy.
I had to delete vga=0x317 from my menu.lst and booting without any vga=* option.
Now my ttys are visible again, but I'd like to have them back in 1024x768 (as I have been using them sind dapper) and not in 640x480 (or 800x640) as they are now.

[Bill Huey (hui) (billh)]

I've encountered this as well, This is the third annoying bug I've discovered after the gutsy upgrade. I fixed this manually.

[Andre Brioso (andre.brioso)]

Same problem here.

I'm also using an Intel video board ( Intel Corporation 82915G/GV/910GL Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 04))

If you want I can attach all the files you need to resolve this bug (I'll maintain my system as it is for the next days).

[Andre Brioso (andre.brioso)]

I'm sending my tty1 file.

If you need more files, I'll be glad to send them too.

Regards,