[plug] mgetty examples...

[The Thought Assassin]

On Sun, 9 Aug 1998, Matt Hutchinson wrote:
> I've looked on the net, I've read the man pages etc. BUT I can't my mgetty
> to work!
> Could someone please give me an example of what I have to type (exactly)
> in my inittab file to use a regular modem on ttyS1?
When you install the mgetty package under Debian, you get the following:

bastow at three:~$ grep -A20 "mgetty begin" /etc/inittab 
#-- mgetty begin
# The following are examples on how to use mgetty for your modem lines.
# Please leave the lines with "mgetty begin" "mgetty end" in this file. If
# you decide to remove mgetty from this system then the parts between
those
# comments will be erased and your inittab cleaned up.

# Standard case: Full featured mgetty controlled from
/etc/mgetty/mgetty.config
#s0:23:respawn:/sbin/mgetty ttyS0

# A modem that does only data. Modems often have trouble distinguishing
data
# calls from fax call. You might want to use this with those troubleone
modems.
#s1:23:respawn:/sbin/mgetty -D ttyS1

# A special modem that displays a different issue file.
#s2:23:respawn:/sbin/mgetty -i /etc/issue.special ttyS2

# A modem that only supports 19200 baud and we would like it to only pick
up
# after the 4th ring.
#s3:23:respawn:/sbin/mgetty -n4 -s19200 -D ttyS3
#-- mgetty end

The first one is likely to be what you are after.

> I am running RedHat 5.1
which means there are a couple of things to check when applying the Debian
config. Firstly, are you in runlevel 2/3 by default?
This is how you tell:

bastow at three:~$ grep default /etc/inittab 
# The default runlevel.
id:2:initdefault:

Which tells me that my system is booting into runlevel 2 by default.
Alternately:

bastow at three:~$ /sbin/runlevel 
N 2

Meaning: "You are in runlevel 2, before which you were in runlevel N (no
runlevel)"

The other thing you will want to check is the path to your mgetty binary.

three# which mgetty
/sbin/mgetty

Notice I am doing this as root, this is because normal users don't have
/sbin in their path by default (by Debian's default, anyway)
You will likely have to be root also.
 
> Are there any other files that i have to change along with the inittab?
Not to start the mgetty, no. But there may be some things you have to do
to ppp to enable an inbound connection. I'll leave that to someone who
knows the RH5.1 default configuration for PPP.

HTH,

-Greg