[Mageia-dev] agetty vs. mingetty

Fri Mar 9 02:40:25 CET 2012

On 03/08/2012 03:17 PM, Colin Guthrie wrote:
+> Hi,
+>
+> Since switching to systemd, the mingetty we used to default to in
+> inittab has been replaced by agetty (the default choice upstream).
+>
+> The question is should we switch it back to mingetty?
+>
+
+Lookin other things I also looked at agetty manual, and found a couple
+useful things:
+
+o      Optionally displays an alternative issue file instead of /etc/issue.
+
+o      Optionally does not ask for a login name.
+
+o      Optionally invokes a non-standard login program instead of /bin/login.
+
+This looks ideal for the case where prefdm fails and you want to show
+a big barner about it on tty1, or even drop the user direcly into
+drakx text mode without any login. Perhaps it can be done in prefdm
+if launching DISPLAYMANAGER fails.
+
+So, if space or memory is not an issue, I will go for agetty in both
+systemd and inittab.
+
+> An argument against mingetty is that the current support in systemd will
+> automatically work over serial consoles. With embedded systems and such
+> more common these days, this might actually be a common situation (for
+> very small values of "common" of course!).
+>
+>> From the man page of mingetty:
+>
+> mingetty is a minimal  getty  for  use  on  virtual  consoles.   Unlike
+> agetty(8),  mingetty  is  not  suitable  for serial lines.  I recommend
+> using mgetty(8) for this purpose.
+>
+>
+> So if we switch to mingetty in getty at .service we'll be sacrificing
+> serial console support.
+>
+> Have people got strong opinions on this? Can anyone remember why we
+> ended up defaulting to mingetty in the first place?
+>
+> Col
+>
+> PS I'm aware of some "strange" behaviour on the current gettys. When on
+> a getty you can use the cursor keys and move the cursor around. Keys
+> such as backspace don't seem to work if you mistype your username or
+> password (I'm pretty sure this used to work, but maybe I'm
+> misremembering?). This is slightly improved with mingetty - in that the
+> cursor keys don't move the text entry area, but they do print
+> non-printable characters that still can't be deleted. I'll try and make
+> this nicer, but it's probably not the highest priority problem on my list :p
+>
+>
+
+
+-- 
+J.A. Magallon <jamagallon()ono!com>        \               Winter is coming...
+