"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

The Answer Guy

By James T. Dennis, answerguy@ssc.com
Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

User Shell on Virtual Console 1

From Todd Blake on 27 May 1998

I like most people am the only person to use my linux system at home. What I'd like to do is when my system is done booting to have me automatically login as my main user account(not as root though) on one virtual console(the first) and leave all other consoles and virtual consoles alone, so that someone telnetting in will get a login prompt like normal, just that I won't. I'd still like the other vc's have login's for others to login and other reasons. I've tried just putting /bin/sh in /etc/inittab and that didn't work, and I'm stumped. Does anyone have any ideas on this?

Todd Blake

Almost right.

If you want this to "always" be running (i.e. when you type "exit" from that shell the system "respawns" a new shell under your UID -- you can use the 'open' command something like so:

# Run gettys in standard runlevels
## 1:12345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
1:12345:respawn:/usr/bin/open -c 1 -w -- su -c - todd /bin/sh

Copyright © 1998, James T. Dennis
Published in Linux Gazette Issue 30 July 1998

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