openpty() failed on disklabel with the installer

[Pierre-Philipp Braun]

Hi,

I am netbooting a sparcstation5 with NetBSD 6.1 for installation. At
the disk initialization stage, I get,

Status: openpty() failed
Command: disklabel -w -r -f /tmp/disktab sd0 'CFP1080E SUN1.0'
Hit enter to continue

I see this issue has been identified a while ago
(http://gnats.netbsd.org/37433).

Those features are enabled in the kernel I used -- a standard GENERIC on
top of the provided rootfs.tgz for the installation program,

options COMPAT_BSDPTY # /dev/[pt]ty?? ptys.
file-system PTYFS # /dev/pts/N support
pseudo-device pty # pseudo-terminals

ref
http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sys/arch/sparc/conf/GENERIC?rev=1.242&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup&only_with_tag=MAIN

So I am proceeding with a command line installation. (dd to erase the
first blocks on rsd0, disklabel -i sd0 writing the default layout --
otherwise got some other troubles, newfs, mount sd0a, mount nfs, tar
xzphfe sets, installboot, MAKEDEV, localtime, rc.conf, fstab). However,
it would have been nice to use the installer !

Pierre-Philipp

[Pierre-Philipp Braun]

Quoting myself,

Post by Pierre-Philipp Braun
I am netbooting a sparcstation5 with NetBSD 6.1 for installation. At
the disk initialization stage, I get,
Status: openpty() failed
Command: disklabel -w -r -f /tmp/disktab sd0 'CFP1080E SUN1.0'
Hit enter to continue

So I installed the system from the command line and I had some similar
issue once it was up and running, while trying to connect to it through SSH,
Server refused to allocate pty
tset: standard error: Inappropriate ioctl for device
so I had to add this to fstab,
ptyfs /dev/pts ptyfs rw 0 0
and mount /dev/pts

It should be the same problem with sysinst since the day where LOTSA was
dropped in favor of ptyfs. Maybe someone fix that or should I send a
PR? I won't have access to that sparcstation in the next days, though.

[Martin Husemann]

These are separate issues. In an installed system, you need ptyfs mounted.
The installer (in most instances) does not do that, but uses a few fixed
pty device nodes instead.

However, I am confused how you did run into this in the first place, before
you dropped back to a manual install.

I may haved missed some details in your original post, can you please
describe in more details how you did boot/run the installer?

Martin

[Pierre-Philipp Braun]

Post by Martin Husemann
I may haved missed some details in your original post, can you please
describe in more details how you did boot/run the installer?

Yes, I wrote up a little guide on how to configure netbooting for
NetBSD/sparc, based on what I did

http://pbraun.nethence.com/obsolete/software/netboot_sparc.html

[Pierre-Philipp Braun]

Hi Martin,

Post by Martin Husemann
I may haved missed some details in your original post, can you please
describe in more details how you did boot/run the installer?

beside the general method I've described, the interesting part for our
matter should be how I got my installation system up and running. In
brief, I used the GENERIC kernel and the provided rootfs.tgz by
NetBSD/sparc 6.1, which I simply extracted using tar xzf. Yep, that was
my mistake, I missed the 'p' option for tar. I should have read the
branded sparc/INSTALL guide instead of re-inventing the wheel by testing
various papers on the web.