Something, somewhere, changes /dev/console from its normal state
(major 4, minor 0) state to a link to a pty such as ttyp0:
crw--w--w- 2 root tty 4, 192 Mar 14 07:02 /dev/console
I think in my case it has something to do with xterm -C and
running shutdown before shutting down X "normally." I could be
completely wrong, however. There's a thread in comp.os.linux.x
concerning this problem.
Anyway, I thought that init was hanging, but in the end it was
simply that as soon as init started, I got no more console messages,
nothing. I suspected a problem with init too, but in the end it was the
above. What on earth would be doing this?
-- Tres Hofmeister Research Applications Program tres@ncar.ucar.edu National Center for Atmospheric Research