Hi guys,

After installing slackware compiling my kernel 2.6.9 and making a new initrd.gz (to boot from my usb hard drive) Im stuck.

My kernel is booted from my USB hard drive fine, but my problem is that I fail to get out of run level 3. I get the error: id "c1" respawning to fast, disabled for 5 minutes.....repeated for c2, c3, c4, c5, c6.

Now I have tested my getty (agetty) and it appears to be working fine when I chroot into the distro. To be sure I replaced it with mingetty in my /etc/inittab and I get the same result, what is causing this. The system just hangs after the error messages finally saying no more processes in run level.

Here is my inittab:-

# Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6)
id:3:initdefault:

# System initialization (runs when system boots).
si:S:sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.S

# Script to run when going single user (runlevel 1).
su:1S:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc.K

# Script to run when going multi user.
rc:2345:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc.M

# What to do at the "Three Finger Salute".
ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t5 -r now

# Runlevel 0 halts the system.
l0:0:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc.0

# Runlevel 6 reboots the system.
l6:6:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc.6

# What to do when power fails.
pf:: powerfail:/sbin/genpowerfail start

# If power is back, cancel the running shutdown.
pg:: powerokwait:/sbin/genpowerfail stop

# These are the standard console login getties in multiuser mode:

#c1:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty1 linux
#c2:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty2 linux
#c3:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty3 linux
#c4:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty4 linux
#c5:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty5 linux
#c6:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty6 linux
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

# Local serial lines:
#s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L ttyS0 9600 vt100
#s2:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L ttyS1 9600 vt100

# Dialup line#d1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -mt60 38400,19200,9600,2400,1200 ttyS0 vt100
#d2:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -mt60 38400,19200,9600,2400,1200 ttyS1 vt100

# Runlevel 4 used to be for an X window only system, until we discovered
# that it throws init into a loop that keeps your load avg at least 1 all
# the time. Thus, there is now one getty opened on tty6. Hopefully no one
# will notice. ;^)
# It might not be bad to have one text console anyway, in case something
# happens to X.
x1:4:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc.4 #Doesnt seem to make it to here

# End of /etc/inittab

btw I have comfirmed that the runlevel there is complete everything seems to be executed up until the end of the getties, run level 4 is not started

Anyhelp is welcome

I don't know if this will help, but from the inittab man page:

Try changing toI would think that either would work, but it's worth a try since it looks like c1 etc are trying to be started.

Im sorry, I dont think I made this very clear, the original problem was that I got the error message about id "c1" respawning too fast, I have successfully commented out the agetty lines and am using mingetty but I get the same error with mingetty only the error is id "1" respawning to fast etc. So no matter what getty Im using it seems to fail. I have switched to the new 2.6.9 kernel, could this be a problem with slackware and that kernel perhaps?

Anyway thanks for the input.

Did you try to compile scsi and usb features as built-in instead of modules ? (without initrd)

I believe I have built in kernel support for usb, not quite sure about scsi but possibly. The exact same kernel (same config) works with two of my other distros currently installed, one of which uses mingetty.

I had the same problem on CORE Linux recently. Kernel is 2.6.x, do not remember precisely which x. I found on Core Forum that this error have encountered many people. There are many posts about it, however I did not find any answer on them.

Mietek.

I believe you are getting something wrong with mounting your root partition in initrd.