Getty, do I need it running?

On Saturday, November 23, 2002, at 09:52 PM, Miles Beck wrote:

> I was looking around at what services were running when trying to kill
> a
> service and noticed the following.
>

> 237 tty1     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty1
> 238 tty2     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty2
> 239 tty3     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty3
> 240 tty4     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty4
> 241 tty5     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty5
> 242 tty6     S      0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty6

>
> I read in the man page this is used for dial up, I do not have dial up
> on
> this system. Is this all Getty is used for and if so, how can I
> prevent it
> from running in the future?

Here is a quick explanation:

tty1 through tty6 are your virtual terminals, accessed by Ctl-Alt-F1
through Ctl-Alt-F6 usually. Getty is the program that runs on these
terminals so that you may log in. If you only used the GUI, then the
argument might be made that you could shut these off. However, I
disagree since it can simplify the repair repair if the "shit hits the
fan". (If you do disable them completely, be sure to check out "single
user mode".)

If they really bother you, then you could easily shut down five of them
by editing /etc/inittab so that they are commented out (each of the
lines beginning as "2:" through "6:" should now read "# 2:" through "#
6:"). Note, however, that you won't really gain anything since the
programs are so small and simplistic that the only difference will be a
slightly shorter "ps" output.

PS: The system I am looking at (RedHat 7.3) uses /sbin/mingetty which
is a stripped down getty not suitable for modems or serial ports. It
is currently using 396 bytes of space per console, but this may not be
true of the getty program which you are using.

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