Hi All,

I have RHEL-5 machine but only Graphical terminal is working for me(Ctrl + Alt + F7). It was pre-configured at office so I don't know whether during installation itself thay have done something for that. I am trying to check /etc/inittab file, but didn't get anything which would help me.
Could anybody please suggest me where can I check this problem, and how can I overcome this ??

Many Thanks in Advance,
kapil

Inspect /etc/securetty and if necessary add consoles from tty1 to tty6.

Hi W1K0,

Thank you for your reply.
I check /etc/securetty file , but all terminals (tty1 to tty9) are already there. Do i need to do anything else in that file.
Is there anything in /etc/inittab file, than can be checked again ??

Thank you,
Kapil.

You would need to check the /etc/inittab file and see what the /sbin/getty that is spawned for 1 - 6.

Here is a sample from my debian box but it still should apply on yours

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6

You may have to make the change and reboot but I am not sure. Also if you add these to your file make a backup first so that in the even something happens you can boot into rescue mode and restore the old file.

Hi jstephens84,

This is what I have in my /etc/inittab file, corresponding to your code :

# Run gettys in standard runlevels
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

# Run xdm in runlevel 5
x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon


I think, it is already having information of all other terminals, and need not to edited anymore. Is there anything else I need to check ?
When I try any other terminal, it asks for username and password, but I can't login with any user, neither local user nor root user.

Thank you,
Kapil.

Hi All,

I checked /etc/inittab and /etc/securetty files, and both seem to be OK as they contain information about tty1 to tty6.
Then I checked /etc/shadow files as well for possibility of user being locked, but no such point is there. Users do exist properly in /etc/passwd and /etc/group as well.

Where else could be the possibility of finding the root-cause of this problem ? This is getting irritating now as this doesn't seemd to be so critical, but it is stopping all further work. When I try to login on any other terminal apart from F5, it is not looging in , and top of it, it is not giving any error as well.

Any suggestion in this would be a great help.

Thank You all in advance....
Kapil.

Hi All,

Any suggestion about the above problem ??

Regards,
Kapil

Hi All,

Sorry for bothering you all again regarding this non-usable console problem. Recently, I have re-installed 32-bit RHEL-5, and now I can use all terminals properly.
I wish to know in what scenario, these terminals can be locked, like I had earlier with pre-configured machine by admin ?? If it was OS fault , then can't be done much, but if it is a security feature, then it is another good feature of Linux

Regards,
Kapil

Possibly access.conf
http://linux.die.net/man/5/access.conf
http://linux.die.net/man/8/pam_access