Hello
I am trying to figure out how to modify the boot process to automatically
spawn a minicom session. (I know I have many other options for what I am
trying to do, but I thaught this would be a good way to learn someghing
about OpenBSD.)
Basically, I have an old laptop, and (partially as a way to learn something
about OpenBSD) I want to set it up as a serial console to use with other
systems. Thus, I am not at all concerned about the security of the login
process (this laptop, once configured) will not connect to a network, and
will have (pretty much) all services disabled. I was also going to convert
the filesystems to read-only, so, a hard shutdown won't disrupt the
filesystems.
In any case, here is my question(s). I have been reading the man pages, and
(in summary) I see that that boot loads the kernel (bsd), pass control to
init which parses through rc, and then spawns the process getty (as defined
by ttys). This results in the login prompt, which, when a username is
entered, calls login which authenticates (using login_passwd), and then sets
several enviormental variables, before spawning a shell. I think this is
right?
So, I think the place for me to modify this process is by changing the
variable to execute getty in /etc/ttys to instead launch minicom? I tried
this, but (i guess, obviously) it did not work.
I assume that I have to set enviormental variables before minicom is
started? Do I need getty and login to spawn a shell before starting
minicom? If I need to go through getty and login, is there a way to
automatically login without password (or any other authentication)? Would a
simple script that sets the enviornemt variables and runs minicom work?
I noticed a statement in one of the entries on this mailing list that
indicated there was a way to do something like this (login automatically /
start a program automatically on login), and that this information was in
the FAQ's, however, I can't seem to find it.
Any help would be really appreciated.
thanks
