Recent versions of live-config have a bug relating to automatic serial console logins (eg, on /dev/ttyS0). These affect headless systems like torouter. Previously, a "live-getty" boot flag was sufficient to enable such logins. At some point this broke, and now even custom versions of /etc/inittab which enable regular logins get mangled by the live-config script '0170-sysvinit'. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=602788 http://live.debian.net/gitweb/?p=live-config.git;a=blob;f=docs/README;h=8059e3d8d2be6616d30f9e695472d4992387f7d2;hb=HEAD As a work-around, the bundled /etc/inittab and script 9999-serial_console combined de-mangle the 0170-sysvinit changes and enable an automatic user login on /dev/ttySO after system boot. See also: config/includes.chroot/etc/inittab config/includes.chroot/lib/live/config/9999-serial_console ### New fix echo "T0:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 115200 vt100" >> /etc/inittab