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From: richard@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Richard Foulk)
Newsgroups: unix-pc.general,comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: /dev/syscon
Keywords: 3B1 unix-pc
Message-ID: <2426@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 25 Sep 88 14:09:20 GMT
References: <212@denwa.uucp>
Reply-To: richard@uhccux.UUCP (Richard Foulk)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 31

} A friend's 3B1 often boots up such that when he logs in he is on
} /dev/syscon rather than on /dev/w1.  Similarly, windy won't work.  It
} looks like the Window Manager is having problems, but the question is
} why.  I checked his /etc/rc and /etc/inittab and they are both
} identical to mine.  All the standard processes are listed with a ps,
} but the wmgr appears to use a suspicously low amount of CPU.  Any ideas?

I've forgotten the details now, but SysV used to have a bug whereby
it would misbehave if the syscon entry in the /dev directory occurred
before the console entry.

Do something like "od -c /dev" on both machines and compare the relative
positions of console and syscon.

To move the console to the beginning of the directory do something
like this:

	ln firstentry temp
	rm firstentry			# free up the first slot
	mv temp firstentry
	ln console console_temp		# grab the first slot
	rm console
	mv console_temp console

firstentry is whatever you find at the top of the list when you
do the "od -c /dev".

This is all just a guess, but earlier releases of SysV did really
funky things with syscon and console.

Richard