Re: faxgetty/aix/inittab?

[Steve Williams <steve@genie96.com>]

> 
> Would some kind soul enlighten me as to why the entry in the inittab
> that fires up faxgetty keeps being overwritten on reboot with an entry
> that calls getty.  This is on a ThinkPad850 running AIX4.1.5 and
> hylaFAX-4.0pl0.
> 

Howdy,

Also, I have a binary distribution for pl1 together, but I don't know how
to get it onto ftp.sgi.com.  I have put it in the incoming directory, but
it fails to get moved into the binary directory.  Anyone have an idea????

If you want pl1 ( has nothing to do with your problem, by the way ), let me
know & I can ftp it to site of your choosing.

onto the problem...

Because that's the way that AIX is.  It has the ODM which stores all the
information & then builds the more "typical" string files that most people
like to see from that.  

It would appear that AIC rebuilds at least part of the inittab on every reboot.

If you read the INSTALL notes for AIX that I wrote up, you have to hack
a rc.local file that has the following line in it, to fix the inittab on
reboot:

>From the INSTALL Notes:

- There is a "hack" required to get dial in support to work nicely.  

- If you do not have an /etc/rc.local, you should probably add one to your 
  /etc/inittab. This gets into scary territory, because you are editing things
  that may make your system UNBOOTABLE.  I won't include directions here, 
  because if you don't know how to do this, you probably shouldn't be.  If
  you really want to do this, send me email & I'll help you out.

- I have included a "snippit" of my /etc/rc.local.  Paste it into yours if 
  you so desire, WITH APPROPRIATE MODIFICATIONS TO THE chitab LINE

- Sample portion of /etc/rc.local

	# Start up the Fax Daemon
	# do a ps first, to see if there is one running.  The PS includes
	# the PS process, so we need to subtract 1 to get the math correct

	num_faxd=`ps -ef | grep faxq | wc -l`
	if [ $num_faxd -eq 1 ]; then
		/usr/local/sbin/faxq > /dev/console 2>&1 # start fax 
	fi

	num_hfaxd=`ps -ef | grep hfaxd | wc -l`
	if [ $num_hfaxd -eq 1 ]; then
		/usr/local/sbin/hfaxd -i hylafax -o fax > /dev/console 2>&1 
	fi

************************************************************
******** this is the line you ( Steve ) need
************************************************************

	# Hack to get faxgetty into inittab
	num_faxgetty=`ps -ef | grep faxgetty | wc -l`
	if [ $num_faxgetty -eq 1 ]; then
		/etc/chitab "tty1:2:respawn:/usr/local/sbin/faxgetty /dev/tty1"
			     ^^^^ ****** Change ********
		sleep 2 ; telinit q
	fi
		

- The "hack" to get faxgetty into the inittab is necessary since the inittab
  is rebuilt on every reboot, with information from the ODM ( read SMIT ).
  SMIT doesn't ( yet ) let you put other programs in it to run instead of 
  getty, so the hack is necessary.  It works totally reliably.  I can't take
  credit for this, I received this tip from someone on the flexfax mailing
  list ( sorry I can't give you credit, I have lost any reference )

-- 
	Steve Williams, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
	Genie Computer Systems Inc.
	steve@genie96.com