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From: rwhite@nusdhub.UUCP (Robert C. White Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Editing inittab?
Message-ID: <1310@nusdhub.UUCP>
Date: 7 Apr 89 01:38:34 GMT
References: <1166@westmark.UUCP>
Organization: National University, San Diego
Lines: 24

in article <1166@westmark.UUCP>, dave@westmark.UUCP (Dave Levenson) says:
> 
> I need to alter the list of daemons running under SysV/386 Rel 3.2,
> but I believe the question is applicable to most UNIX versions:
> 
> When is it ever safe to edit /etc/inittab when UNIX is running?
> The init(1) program reads this file whenever it is told to by
> telinit or init Q.  It also reads this file whenever one of its
> children dies.

According to my manual init does not re-read inittab when a process
dies.  Init builds a list of "respawn" jobs to watch over durring a
read-extract phase, and uses this table to maintain state.  If this
were not the case it would have to rescan every time a zombie or
defunct processess exited.

Init only scans the file after an init or telinit command (Q is the
init state which is equal to verify current state).  I don't beleive
that init even does the periodic stat (like cron) to check for updates.
Anyway, I have never had any problem editing inittab, and sysadm ttymgmt
dosn't do anything special to guard against tye condition you are
fretting over, so I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Rob.