Bug#760947: systemd: Does not start consoles configured in /etc/inittab

[Brian Potkin]

On Tue 09 Sep 2014 at 13:37:50 +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:

> On a wheezy system, I had a serial console configured in /etc/inittab,
> used as a secondary work terminal (i.e. no console=ttyS0 on the kernel
> command line). After an upgrade to Jessie, logind doesn't start a getty
> on ttyS0.

Is

   http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/serial-console.html

any use?

> Steps to reproduce:
> 
> - install Wheezy
> - uncomment ttyS0 line from /etc/inittab
> - init q, login appears on ttyS0
> - upgrade to Jessie
> - reboot, login doesn't appear on ttyS0
> 
> The same happens with supplementary terminals configured in
> /etc/inittab:
> 
> 7:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -8 38400 tty7
> 8:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -8 38400 tty8
> 
> etc.
> 
> On a freshly installed Jessie system, /etc/inittab still gets installed,
> but has no effect. That will be very surprising to admins.

The init (1.20) package for d-i's beta-1 has

   Pre-Depends: sysvinit-core | systemd-sysv | upstart

sysvinit-core contains inittab,

init (1.21) has

   Pre-Depends: systemd-sysv | sysvinit-core | upstart

Admins may be surprised that /etc/inittab is absent but should rapidly
catch on it is not used with systemd.

Regards,

Brian.