Problem booting live CD built on etch: INIT: Id "1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

[mfortson at permabit.com (Michael Fortson)]

I've been trying to build a Debian Live ISO on an etch system and have 
been running into some problems.

As I'm just getting started w/ Debian Live (my goal is simply to add 
some extra software to the CD that I can run w/in the live environment), 
I built it with:

# lh_config && lh_build

When I boot the ISO, the message I get is:

INIT: Id "1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

Booting the CD via "live single" and looking at the inittab, I see:

1:2345:respawn:/bin/login -f user </dev/tty1 >/dev/tty1 2>&1
2:23:respawn:/bin/login -f user </dev/tty2 >/dev/tty2 2>&1
etc...

Unfortunately, there is no user called "user" on the system.  An error 
in live.log w/regard to chpasswd points to the issue (i think):

-----begin live.log snippet-----
Begin: Adding live session user... ...
Shadow passwords are now on.
chpasswd: the -c, -e, and -m flags are exclusive
Usage: chpasswd [options]

Options:
  -c, --crypt-method            the crypt method (one of NONE DES MD5 
SHA256 SHA512)
  -e, --encrypted               supplied passwords are encrypted
  -h, --help                    display this help message and exit
  -m, --md5                     encrypt the clear text password using
                                the MD5 algorithm
  -s, --sha-rounds              number of SHA rounds for the SHA*
                                crypt algorithms
------end---------

And indeed, it does look like /usr/lib/user-setup/user-setup-apply will 
pass -e and -c if pre-crypted passwords are used:

---- begin user-apply-setup snippet ---
setpassword () {
        local USER
        local PASSWD
        local PRECRYPTED
        USER="$1"
        PASSWD="$2"
        if [ "$3" = true ]; then
                PRECRYPTED=-e
        fi
        $chroot $ROOT chpasswd $PRECRYPTED -m <<EOF
$USER:$PASSWD
EOF
}
------end------


A bit about my build environment:  I downloaded and installed a "stock" 
Debian Etch x86 CD and grabbed the live-helper backport from 
debian-unofficial.org.  I think these package/versions could be relevant:

$ dpkg -l | grep 'passwd\|live-help\|bootstr\|offic'
ii  base-passwd                       
3.5.11                               Debian base system master password 
and group files
ii  cdebootstrap-static               
0.4.4                                Bootstrap a Debian system - static 
binary
ii  debian-unofficial-archive-keyring 
2008.01.01-1~backports40+1           GnuPG archive keys of the Debian 
Unofficial archive
ii  debootstrap                       
1.0.8~backports40+1                  Bootstrap a basic Debian system
ii  live-helper                       
1.0~a37-2~backports40+1              Debian Live helper programs
ii  passwd                            
4.0.18.1-7                           change and administer password and 
group data

After that, as I mentioned earlier, i just ran "lh_config && lh_build".

Any ideas?

-Michael Fortson