Failing to show 'Password:' prompt

[Paul B. Mahol]

On 7/1/09, Manolis Kiagias <sonicy at otenet.gr> wrote:
> This morning my server was unresponsive both from ssh and through http.
> The only thing that is different on this system on a 1st of month, is a
> dump job that runs through periodic (on a mostly inactive system).
>
> Visiting the console, I discovered the system was still up and
> displaying login prompt on all vtys, but after typing a username, the
> password prompt would never appear. Keyboard was responsive and I could
> even switch between keyboard layouts (English/Greek). Plugging and and
> unplugging an external USB drive, showed the kernel messages on tty0.
> Still, I could not get it to display a password prompt and had to hard
> reboot it.
>
> I can't find anything in /var/log/messages either - it stops at 5.25 in
> the morning.  And the dump was not performed either (and there are no
> traces about it in the log).
>
> What kind of crash could cause the password prompt to not display? Ideas?

Can you actually log in?
Login prompt and password propmt are configurable via gettytab and
login.conf.(db)

-- 
Paul