On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 02:15:45PM +0000, David Laight wrote:

> Ok: adding 'ec' to the line in /etc/gettytab will make getty exec
> login with echo turned off.

Ah great.. yes I read the getty code and it even seemed a bit messy... I wrote
my replacement to solve the problem on the boxes I was speaking about, it's
very tiny, sets console in raw mode and uses it's own input function as well...
Although it accounts for much less, and obviously wouldn't work for everyone

> This does stop any typeahead of the password being echoed.
> It is discarded though.
> The only slight problem is that login doesn't turn echo on when
> asking for the username if it has to reprompt (this could be deemed to
> be a bug).
> It does get turned on by the time the shell runs.
> 
> If you are using a remote username database, then there is plenty of scope
> for the password prompt being delayed much more than usual.
> (ktrace has a similar effect)

Indeed