How to Resolve init: Id “x” respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

In most of linux distributions, this message means that the system boot by default into runlevel 5, which is supposed to respawn (re-start again after it’s been exited) a gui login via x windows, kdm, gdm, or whatever, but the system can’t locate the program. Consequently, the following logs will continue to appear on your /var/log/messages for every 5 minutes.

Mar 22 21:05:14 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 21:10:15 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 21:15:16 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 21:20:17 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 21:20:32 server last message repeated 11 times
Mar 22 21:25:18 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 21:30:19 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 21:35:20 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 21:40:21 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 21:45:22 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 21:50:23 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 21:55:25 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 21:59:53 server last message repeated 4 times
Mar 22 21:59:53 server last message repeated 3 times
Mar 22 22:00:26 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 22:05:27 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 22:09:33 server last message repeated 7 times
Mar 22 22:10:28 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 22:15:29 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 22:20:30 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 22:23:49 server last message repeated 2 times
Mar 22 22:25:31 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 22:27:58 server last message repeated 2 times
Mar 22 22:30:32 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 22:35:33 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 22:36:01 server last message repeated 3 times
Mar 22 22:40:34 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 22:45:35 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 22:50:36 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 22:55:37 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 23:00:38 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Mar 22 23:05:39 server init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

However, “Id” can also indicate the absence or misconfiguration of another program, like mingetty, if init tries to respawn itself more than 10 times in 2 minutes.

Reason:
I have removed the “X Window System” and “GNOME Desktop Environment” but never update the /etc/inittab.

Solution:

[root@server ~]# vi /etc/inittab

Change the initdefault id to 3 as below:-

#
# inittab       This file describes how the INIT process should set up
#               the system in a certain run-level.
#
# Author:       Miquel van Smoorenburg, 
#               Modified for RHS Linux by Marc Ewing and Donnie Barnes
#

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
#   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
#   3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#
id:3:initdefault:

Save and quit the /etc/inittab then reboot the system.