Thank you to all that helped. I never did find any script that appeared to be responsible for the miraculous "healing" of the inittab file.
The final resolution was to install the 2.1 base disks with the 2.0 rescue and driver floppies, download the latest kernel and use a linux/bash emulator on my NT desktop to build a custom compilation of the kernel that included the needed Xircom support. I tried emailing the disk maintainer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) about the problems I experienced with the latest disks, but got a bounce saying that no such user existed. If anyone knows an alternate means of reaching him, please let me know. - BOHICA -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 25, 1998 19:46 To: BOHICA Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: Modem trouble, Please help!! BOHICA writes: > btw: I have noticed that I no longer need any passwords to login, not > even as root! Worser and worser. > Could this be related to the self-healing? Could be. If so, I'm wrong about pcmcia. This begins to sound like a bug in boot-floppies, but I would have though someone else would have seen it by now. I believe that there are some self-removing install scripts. Perhaps one of them was not removed. Could you hunt around for odd-looking scripts? -- John Hasler This posting is in the public domain. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Do with it what you will. Dancing Horse Hill Make money from it if you can; I don't mind. Elmwood, Wisconsin Do not send email advertisements to this address.