Flooding of log " INIT: Id "s0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes " in VM console.
13131
Created On 11/10/22 00:30 AM - Last Modified 05/28/25 20:25 PM
Symptom
Error message "INIT: Id "s0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes" populating multiple times on the console:
INIT: Id "s0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "s0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "s0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "s0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Environment
- Palo Alto VM Series Firewall
- PAN OS: 11.0.0
Cause
A serial console needs to be configured while creating a VM instance to get rid of such error messages.
Resolution
Configure and add a serial port to the VM. Once done, these messages will stop.
Additional Information
VMWare doc - Add a Serial Console to Virtual Machine
- The error means that the "init" program is trying to launch a program identified with the ID s0 in /etc/inittab but the program exited immediately.
- Since s0 is configured with the "respawn" directive, the "init" will try to restart the program but then the program will exit again immediately like before.
- If this happens multiple times in a short time, the "init" program will throttle the restarting of the program by not starting the program again for around 5 minutes (as mentioned by the log).