Subject: /dev/pty weirdness
To: NetBSD Mac68k <port-mac68k@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Colin Wood <ender@is.rice.edu>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 01/20/1997 15:56:16
I seem to have an interesting problem.  Yesterday I finished reinstalling 
my NetBSD system, having gone through the entire process (i.e. from 
formatting on up) for the first time in about 2 years.  For the most part 
(sparing my own stupid mistakes) it has gone fairly smoothly.  I've 
upgraded to -current (well the binaries are the latest snapshot from 
December and my kernel is a custom one that has 3-button A3 mouse support 
as well as color video support, source from around October) and most 
everything seems to be fine.  

However, I was using X when I first noticed that there is one small 
problem: I only have 4 working pty's.  I know, I know, that's the 
default, so of course I followed the recommended procedure of cd /dev; 
./MAKEDEV pty0  to fill out the first 16.  I know I have at least that 
many in my kernel config file.  Anyway, that did not fix the problem.  I 
still didn't have enough pty's.  So, I thought, maybe I'll reboot and 
that'll solve the problem.  It made it worse.  I now have _no_ working 
pty's at all.  Taking a look at the /dev directory seems to indicate what 
might be part of the problem:  the Installer utility creates pty's with 
major device number 5 (and tty's with 4), whereas MAKEDEV seems to create 
tty's with major number 5 and pty's with 6.

So, does anyone know why this is happening?  Do I simply need to get my 
files more in sync?  Or is something else wrong entirely?

TIA.

Later.

-- 
Colin Wood                                      ender@is.rice.edu
Consultant                                        Rice University
Information Technology Services                       Houston, TX