1. a minimal console getty that can run any process rungetty might be the getty you were looking for. It is able to run any program, not just login. If a different program than login is used it usually is run as nobody.nobody, or the user/group specified on the commandline. rungetty can even be configured to autologin, under certain circumstances. See the manual page for more information. You have to change some lines in /etc/inittab for having any effect after installing the package. rungetty is based on mingetty and therefore not suitable for serial use. From Debian 3.0r0 APT