Re: multiple copies of getty running Newbie #61

[Craig Dickson <crdic@yahoo.com>]

Ian Balchin wrote:

> I see in top that there are always copies of getty running - 4 copies 
> that I can see all owned by root.
> 
> Is this normal?
> 
> I thought getty was to listen on the modem for incoming calls, and since 
> that is not going to happen perhaps I should unistall this, or is there a 
> way to temporarily disable this action

getty is normally running on tty1 through tty6, and anywhere else you
may have it configured. In /etc/inittab you probably have something like
this, usually towards the end of the file:

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty tty1 38400
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty tty2 38400
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty tty3 38400
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty tty4 38400
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty tty5 38400
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty tty6 38400

This tells init to start instances of getty for each of your virtual
consoles, which are accessible with ctrl-alt-f1 through ctrl-alt-f6. X
usually runs on vt7 (ctrl-alt-f7).

See the man pages for inittab(5) and getty(8) for details.

Craig