yea, prompted with this lovely message this morning
the only info i can give is that ive recently updated/installed gtk+2, JRE 1.6, JDK and possibly glibc
i have slack 12 dvd/knoppix next to me ready to...googleing lead me to replacing the /sbin directory but i dont have another install handy to do that
i dont think java had anything to do with this and im thinking its the glibc but how can i go about a speedy fix?
im not near my machine at the moment so i can post more info asap

Slackware 12.0 doesn't have an updated gtk+2, jre, jdk, or glibc, so where did you get these "updates" ?

If you installed packages from the -current (development towards 12.1) branch, that was a bad idea.

i know i went after gtk+2 to get something working
then i installed JDK/JRE to get limewire working
and glibc for some reason...maybe to get some missing libraries

I think you missed the point.

Did you install them from the 12.0 or -current package sets?

it was individual tarballs over a course of 3 days or so

Mutagenix is doing the same thing, it fails to load X and then INIT disables itself for respawning to fast
...ill try knoppix

Upgrading glibc is a BAD idea without upgrading the rest of the system. A really bad idea. How did you upgrade glibc? (This is important in attempting to fix the problem.) Did you download an existing .tgz package that you installed with `installpkg glibc...` or `upgradepkg glibc...`, or did you compile it yourself (and if you DID compile it yourself, did you create a package or just let it install without thinking about uninstallation)?

The easy way would be to download the glibc package from your favourite mirror (the version in slackware-12.0, not slackware-current) and `upgradepkg glibc...` IF you created/downloaded a package for the updated glibc version you installed. If not, maybe `installpkg glibc...`, but that's pretty iffy and many residual files will probably remain.

If you just "blind compiled" glibc on your own, go ahead and reinstall. It's the easiest way out of that mess.

see this is what sucks cause im not even sure if it was glibc
bah, i might just give up and reinstall

ok so i just did a fresh install and yet the problem has presented itself again
once i got back into my box i reinstalled apps that i have been using and some new apps that shouldnt cause any problems, once i restarted i got the same issue
madwifi driver - have use with no problems
nvidia driver and beryl - have used with no problems
fuse and ntfs-3g - installed and remounted drives, could read and write w/ no problems...not sure if a restart was involved
openoffice and limewire - recently added but should cause any issues
libdvdcss - have used with no problems

this is literally all that was reinstalled after a fresh install...could one of those apps really lock me out of my system?
the only one i could see causing file access issues is ntfs-3g but that doesnt make a whole lot of sense

After the fresh install, and before you installed the other apps, did agetty work for you?
have you check if /sbin/agetty has mode 755? is /sbin/agetty even present?
Are you installing those apps from source, using a slackbuild from somewhere, using a binary package? Does it come from a trusted site?
Might be paranoia, but your system could have been compromised.

/sbin/agetty is present - the mode is not known right now, ill check on that
its one of these apps thats causing it...it has to be - the trick is just narrowing it down

edit: it does have RWX

Can you execute agetty in a console ?

What does your /etc/inittab look like ?

i just edited it to see what would happen...nothing obviously - and no i havent tried to execute it in a console...the only way i can use it is through knoppix or my slack12 dvd