The Debian init system general resolution returns

So starting with no gettys active I start a getty on tty4
systemctl start getty@tty4.service
seems to work just fine to start the getty up. A see an agetty instance on tty4 now in the ps output.

and to manually restart it...
systemctl restart getty@tty4.service
new agetty pid on tty4 on ps output.

And then I can kill it off with
systemctl stop getty@tty4.service

And looking at the getty service file seems its configured to always restart if it crashes... so I can test that... forcible kill the agetty process... and systemd respawns it as configured.

And starting up specific gettys on boot is easy as well through normal systemd target want mechanisms. arch wiki covers some of the options available to admins if you need a starting example.

So what am I missing with regard to getty restart that you want to do that systemd doesn't provide for? Serious question.

Given the capabilities I have access to right now with systemd's concept of targets, which are far more flexible than inittab's concept of runlevel.. I really don't understand the advantage of trying to keep support for inittab. I'm not aware of any functionality I'm giving up at present by not having access to inittab symantics.

Meh.

-jef