2008/12/23 Robert P. J. Day <rpj...@crashcourse.ca>: > On Mon, 22 Dec 2008, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > >> >> i suspect i already know the answer to this, but is there any way to >> run dropbear on a system whose /dev directory is part of a larger >> romfs? >> >> ssh to such a system worked fine during development when the root >> filesystem was NFS mounted and, therefore, writable. but once that >> rootfs is flashed and is now mounted as a romfs, not surprisingly, >> dropbear can no longer accept incoming requests because (i'm >> guessing) while the appropriate /dev/ttyp[0-9] device files are there, >> dropbear has no ability to change their owner/perms, is that it? >> which generates the log error message: >> >> pty_allocate: openpty: No child processes >> no pty was allocated, couldn't execute >> >> is there a way around this? i would have guessed not, but i'm >> willing to be pleasantly surprised. > > actually, a thought just occurred to me. i checked and, with an NFS > mount with a writable /dev, an ssh session comes in and is associated > with a /dev/ttyp[0-9] device file (the first available one). > > is another option to mount the /dev/pts filesystem and, if so, would > dropbear try to grab one of *those* device files instead? since > that's a pseudo filesystem, its device files should be writable, no? > even when /dev itself isn't.
Hi Robert Couldn't you mount a ramfs over /dev and create the necessary device files in it? Should be easy enough to copy /dev to the ramfs first using tar or cpio. Cheers Grahame