On Sat, Jan 12, 2002 at 12:41:56PM +1100, Adam F. Bogacki wrote:
> INIT:Id"4" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
> INIT: no more processes left in this runlevel.
> 
> When I tried the same with the 2.4.14 kernel it was simpler:
> 
> "Starting GNOME display manager

Not sure why you got that message above with kernel 2.4.14 but not from
2.2. I thought you had stopped gdm from starting. 
(at least from runlevel 2)

Does "grep default /etc/inittab" return: 

# The default runlevel.
id:2:initdefault:

> INIT:Id"1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
> INIT: no more processes left in this runlevel"

I can only make some guesses here.

getty appears to be unhappy. 

Boot in single user mode and check that your tty devices exist ie:
ls -l /dev/tty?

The first two of mine look like:
crw------- 1 root  root  4, 0 Jan  9 20:28 /dev/tty0
crw------- 1 root  tty   4, 1 Jan 13 15:24 /dev/tty1

See if you have any messages in syslog from than last time you
booted and got the respawn messages, ie 
"less /var/log/syslog" scroll down to that last time
you booted and look for any error messages, or anything that 
might give you a clue.

Try running getty from the command line:
/sbin/getty 38400 tty2

See if you get any error messages, or you could try
strace /sbin/getty 38400 tty2 2>/tmp/getty.out
then "less /tmp/getty.out"

> Has anyone got any constructive ideas ?

You could swap hdb and hde, then do a fresh install of
debian on the new blank hdb, upgrade it to woody (or potato +
bunk packages) and kernel 2.4. 

Then try and work out whats broken on your old system, which
you should be able to see as hde.


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