I have seen something similar to what you describe if the
windowing system is exited whilst there is still a background
process running in a windowed console window.

In this case, it recovers if you kill that process and then
/etc/telinit q
to make init respawn a ttymon (getty mode) for the console.

Finding the offending process is not easy, because 'ps' no
longer annotates it as belonging to the console when things
get into this state.

--
Andrew Gabriel
Consultant Software Engineer

Hi Adam,

'oninit' processes are the virtual processors for Informix Online, and
are started when the database comes up, and stay till it's closed down.
Depending on the way Online is configured, there could be anything from
a few to loads of oninit's. Normally tho' they are daemons - tty '?'.

Is there something in your boot scripts starting Online, and perhaps
going pear-shaped? Check thru the scripts in '/etc/rc2.d' for the
command 'oninit', which starts up Online when going into multi-user.

Regards,

--
Phil Rule