Here are a couple of login tips--one from a problem I brought up with debian unstable a couple of months ago, and the other from a question about automatic login that I can't find, either because it's in one of the months that didn't make the archives or because I'm mixed up and it was really a question on blinux. If you are using debian unstable and still being driven crazy by getting the "respawning too fast; disabled for 5 minutes" when you log out, the util-linux package from testing doesn't have this problem and, for the time being anyway, still appears to be compatible with unstable. As for autologin, it is possible to do this with mingetty. If you are already using mingetty, it appears that all you need do is add --autologin username (the username of course being your own--NOT root) to your tty1 line in /etc/inittab. It's my understanding that mingetty will do this with only one tty, so you can weigh the security risks and decide whether or not you want to do it. It does, however, work. As for people who do not have mingetty already in use (debian users don't), you have to edit your /etc/inittab. Change "getty 38400" for each tty entry to "mingetty" (without the quotes); note that you remove the 38400. After the tty indicator, put an intervening space and your switches: --noclear if you don't want the screen cleared before the login prompt and --autologin username (your own username, NOT root) after tty1. I haven't determined whether this works with the buggy unstable util-linux, but it's fine with the testing util-linux package. It seems to me that the person asking about this might have wanted to do an autologin on more than one console, maybe some with root and some with the ordinary user; I don't remember the details of the post, and I would imagine this kind of setup, if possible, could be a bigger potential security problem. Hope this is of interest to somebody, and hope I'm not sending it to the wrong list. -- Cheryl "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
