how to get busybox shell prompt on console port?

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005, Kylo Ginsberg wrote:

> I use this line in /etc/inittab (assuming you've built busybox to include sh):
>
> ttyCPM0::respawn:-/bin/sh

(first, a caveat: even though this is the 2.6 kernel, i'm still using
devfs for historical reasons.  that will change shortly but may be
part of my problems.)

i'm pretty sure i tried that combo, and several others like it, and i
finally had success with the following entry in /etc/inittab:

  ::respawn:/bin/sh < /dev/console > /dev/console 2> /dev/console

yes, it's disgusting but it works.  once i got a prompt, i noticed
that these are the contents of /dev:

crw-------    1 root     root     204,  46 Dec 31  1969 <NULL>0
crw-------    1 root     root     204,  47 Dec 31  1969 <NULL>1
crw-------    1 root     root       5,   1 Oct  2 08:56 console
crw-rw-rw-    1 root     root       1,   7 Dec 31  1969 full
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec 31  1969 input
crw-r-----    1 root     root       1,   2 Dec 31  1969 kmem
crw-r--r--    1 root     root       1,  11 Dec 31  1969 kmsg
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec 31  1969 loop
crw-r-----    1 root     root       1,   1 Dec 31  1969 mem
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec 31  1969 misc
crw-rw-rw-    1 root     root       1,   3 Dec 31  1969 null
crw-r-----    1 root     root       1,   4 Dec 31  1969 port
crw-rw-rw-    1 root     root       5,   2 Dec 31  1969 ptmx
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec 31  1969 pts
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec 31  1969 pty
crw-r--r--    1 root     root       1,   8 Dec 31  1969 random
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec 31  1969 rd
lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root            4 Sep 25  1969 root -> rd/0
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec 31  1969 shm
crw-rw-rw-    1 root     root       5,   0 Dec 31  1969 tty
crw-r--r--    1 root     root       1,   9 Dec 31  1969 urandom
crw-rw-rw-    1 root     root       1,   5 Dec 31  1969 zero


  in other words, no /dev/ttyCPM0 which may be why that first solution
never worked (i'm still fuzzy on support for the serial/console ports
so i'm reading up on that now.)  but given that i have a /dev/console,
i'll stick with that for now until i have a better fix.

  and what's the two "NULL" entries up there?  those are new to me.

rday