Re: can I boot without password?

[David Z Maze <dmaze@MIT.EDU>]

Tom Glass <tom@sapidyne.com> writes:
TG> I'm developing an app to run on an embedded system.  There will
TG> not be a keyboard, so I need to have the system boot (single user,
TG> no x-windows) without requiring a password.

What's really going on?  It sounds like you want a particular program
to run, without you actually logging in.  In this case, the best
things to do probably are:

-- Make sure none of the X packages are installed.  In particular,
   make sure that none of xdm, gdm, and wdm are installed; these are
   the X display managers that provide a graphical login.  For your
   purposes you probably don't need or want anything X-related at all.

-- Write a script in /etc/init.d to run your program; this can be
   modeled on one of the other scripts there.

-- Set up a runlevel to run just the programs you want.  This involves 
   tweaking the symlinks in /etc/rc?.d; if you wanted to make runlevel 
   5 be "your setup", you'd modify /etc/rc5.d.  Make sure you add a
   S??foo symlink to the init script you wrote before.

-- Edit /etc/inittab, and change the default runlevel to what you want 
   (probably after testing it first via telinit(8)).

At this point, when your system boots, it'll run your program,
regardless of whether or not anybody logs in.  You should be able to
take the various getty lines out of /etc/inittab if you *really* don't 
want a login prompt at all.  Good luck...

-- 
David Maze             dmaze@mit.edu          http://www.mit.edu/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell