/etc/inittab (esp. ttys) not migrated to upstart jobs

[MasterEvilAce]

I've edited my /etc/inittab and commented out most of my virtual consoles like so:

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
#2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
#3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
#4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
#5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
#6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6

This worked in Dapper, but since i've updated to Edgy, I can still see exactly 6 getty's in my KDE System Guard processes list.

These virtual consoles are still getting loaded somehow

[Not anymore (printkioatic)]

I believe with edgy, there is no more /etc/inittab. This is probably left over from your Dapper install. Edit your /etc/default/console-setup file. There is a variable called ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]".... edit that to suite your needs, reboot and that should fix it for you.

Thanks,
printk

[Not anymore (printkioatic)]

Er let me correct myself. Knot 2 and below still used the old init system, but since Knot3 was released (technically before...) upstart is the init system. This does not use /etc/inittab.

[MasterEvilAce (masterevilace-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks for the info.

I do have that /etc/default/console-setup file, and I have changed the 6 to a 2, and I restarted.

 Still seems to load up all 6 of the consoles.

[Not anymore (printkioatic)]

Ah ok. I left out an important step :) You must go into the directory /etc/event.d/ and you will see files tty1 -> tt6. Edit all the tty files that you do NOT want to be loaded on startup. Every line that has a 'start' in front of it, comment that out. Also comment out the 'respawn' line at the end of each tty file that you do NOT want to be initialized. I just tested this out leaving only tty1 and tty2 active and it worked for me. Let me know how it goes!

I'm still getting used to the upstart init system myself :)

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

You don't need to comment out the respawn line, commenting out the "start on" lines is sufficient

[Not anymore (printkioatic)]

Ah ok good to know. I fugred the respawn is only there to keep that VC listening when a user exists that VC. But of course it can't respawn a VC that never existed anyway, so I see why it's safe to leave 'respawn' uncommented.

[MasterEvilAce (masterevilace-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks Jayson. That definitely worked that time.

Last question.. what about commenting out the Stop line? Will that theoretically speed up shutdown (even though it probably would not be noticable)?

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

No, it will make no difference as it would not be running when the stop event came in

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

You can also delete the tty3-tty6 files; though that prevents you doing "start tty3" later if you feel like having one

[9johnny (s.j.)]

i think removing the vga= line from grub kernel bootparams helps. I did help me at least.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This is going to be pretty important when upgrading servers with serial consoles from Dapper. I'd like to see something in place by Edgy final.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Due to the very free-form nature of the /etc/inittab file, I'm not sure it's even possible I'm afraid.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Migration is now performed on fresh installations.

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto (fabbione)]

Sorry Scott, what do you mean on fresh installation?

Fabio

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Of the system-services package; ie the point at which you do the dapper->edgy upgrade.

You can trigger it with just "sh /var/lib/dpkg/info/system-services.postinst configure ''"

Sorry, should have made that clear; on first installation of the package, obviously not just on a fresh edgy installation -- that would defeat the point ;)

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto (fabbione)]

Thanks you almost scared me for a minute.. or 140 :P

[James Cole (intangi)]

On my system the "/etc/default/console-setup" file did not exist, the package "console-setup" which provides it was never required as dependency for me, so I just suddenly didn't have any more console, only X, which became a problem when I borked my nvidia drivers :-).

This package should probably be included as a dependency somewhere.