[OT-RH9] INIT Respawning Problem

[Don]

Apologies for the RH9 question, but I have searched and not been able to
find a solution to this problem.  This seems like a pretty active mailing
list with a lot of knowledgeable folks on it.  So here goes .........

I have run into a problem on my RH9 machine in that after booting it
complains:

INIT: Id "3" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes.
INIT: Id "4" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes.
INIT: Id "5" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes.
INIT: Id "6" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes.

Now I am guessing the IDs represent either runlevels or virtual terminals
(only alt-F1 and alt-F2 seem to do anything) and that the X server is
somehow corrupted I cannot get XFree86 to start.  In the searches that I
have done, this seems to be a fairly common problem, but solutions seem
rather thin.  Usually along the lines of check inittab or reconfigure the
xserver.  Well, I have checked inittab best I can, and reset the default
runlevel to 3 which supposedly stops the problem to help with debugging.
Unfortunately, at runlevel 3 I still get the messages and I can't get X
configured.  It complains that it cannot establish a connection to tty3.
Here are what I think are pertinent lines from my inittab:

id:3:initdefault:

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

During the early phases of booting (when services are starting), I noticed
the following:

INIT version 2.84 Booting
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit:Line 39: /dev/tty3 Input/output error
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit:Line 39: /dev/tty4 Input/output error
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit:Line 39: /dev/tty5 Input/output error
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit:Line 39: /dev/tty6 Input/output error
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit:Line 44: /dev/tty8 Input/output error

which if I am reading rc.sysinit right means there appears to be a problem
with it reading the inittab file.

Some other suggested solutions refer to possible file corruption, but
provide no information on identifying which files might be corrupt or how to
restore them.  If it is a file corruption problem, is the only solution to
re-install?

Any suggestions on where to look for a complete debugging guide/solution to
this problem will be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

Don