inittab

It is possible to let the ``init'' process start additional programs on additional consoles or to change the default commands. An inittab entry is structured as follows:

    device:runlevel:action:command

The device denotes the terminal used for program input/output. Possible devices are terminals tty1-tty4 or serial terminals ttyS0-ttySn with n < the number of available serial ports.

The possible actions are typically askfirst or respawn. Using askfirst lets ``init'' wait for a keypress before running that command. The respawn action causes the command to be automatically restarted whenever it terminates.

command specifies the program to execute. You have to use a fully qualified path.

The documentation of the Busybox toolkit at http://www.busybox.net contains a detailed description of the inittab format.

The normal inittab file is as follows:

    ::sysinit:/etc/rc
    ::respawn:cttyhack /usr/local/bin/mini-login
    ::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/reboot
    ::shutdown:/etc/rc0
    ::restart:/sbin/init

You could e.g. extend it by the entry

    tty2::askfirst:cttyhack /usr/local/bin/mini-login

in order to get a second login process on the second terminal. To achieve this, simply copy the file opt/etc/inittab to <config directory>/etc/inittab and edit the copy accordingly.