mgetty basic setup

[David Gaudine <david@annette.concordia.ca>]

I have mgetty working on a Slackware system, so I assumed I'd have no
trouble getting it working on a Debian system.  Boy, was I wrong.
I have no idea what I'm doing, or why nobody else seems to have trouble.
I couldn't find any debian-specific instructions.

1) using "dpkg --contents mgetty_099.deb", I see that various
   configuration files (login.config, mgetty.config, etc.) go in
   /etc/mgetty.  However, after installing the package, that directory
   was empty.  Why?  I've removed and reinstalled the package, using
   both dselect and dpkg; usually /etc/mgetty is empty, once login.config
   mysteriously appeared.  Finally I copied the files from the Slackware
   system.

2) What should the line in /etc/inittab be?  I'm using
       d3:45:respawn:/sbin/mgetty ttyS2
   because this is what worked with Slackware.  (not exactly; the other
   system used com2 (d2,ttyS1), and /usr/local/sbin).  Where is this
   d3:45 stuff documented?  The reason I got it working with Slackware
   is that there were already sample lines commented out.  (I think.)

   BTW, the modem is set to com3, and minicom works using /dev/ttyS2

3) Do I need the "gettydefs" file?  I copied it from - you guessed it -
   the slackware system.

Oh, I should mention what happens; absolutely nothing.  No answer, no
logs.