A server at work today appeared unresponsive to all network traffic. The machine in question doesn't have a k/v/m terminal; it's configured to use a serial console. So I connected to the serial console and got /etc/issue (with all the \char sequences properly expanded). At the login: prompt I typed root and pressed Enter. Several seconds went by before the Password: prompt was displayed. I typed the password and soon saw Login timed out after 60 seconds At which point /etc/issue and the login: prompt reappeared. Later investigation revealed the load average was hovering around 100, so it's unlikely the machine would be able to process the username and password in under a minute. I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to lengthen that timeout value from 60 to, say, 180. This isn't the first time I've wanted to kill a runaway process and been unable to get a console because of that timeout. -- Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> http://www.madboa.com/
Paul Heinlein wrote:> > I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to lengthen that timeout > value from 60 to, say, 180. This isn't the first time I've wanted to > kill a runaway process and been unable to get a console because of > that timeout. > >At a guess, you should look at http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/howlinuxworks/linux_hllogin.html -- Benjamin Franz
Paul Heinlein wrote:> I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to lengthen that timeout > value from 60 to, say, 180. This isn't the first time I've wanted to > kill a runaway process and been unable to get a console because of > that timeout.I poked around a bunch but couldn't find a config that can be adjusted.. I do see that the particular message comes from /bin/login # strings login | grep -i timed Login timed out after %d seconds which seems to be part of the util-linux package, so perhaps poke around in the source, maybe there is a .h file that you can adjust with a higher value and rebuild it. nate