Hi,

After installing mac68k NetBSD 1.6.2 on a Centris 650 from scratch, I
was unable to get a login prompt on the console (built-in video and
keyboard) in multi-user mode.  I saw this after doing a sysinst install,
as well as using the old installer after building devices.

I noticed that during the boot-up procedure that there was complaint that
/dev/ttyE0 does not exist.  And getty appeared to complain periodically
about /dev/ttyE0 not existing.  Doing an ls of /dev showed that /dev/ttyE0
does not indeed exist, though there is a /dev/ttye0 device.

The fix was to turn "on" the console device (and comment out the ttyE0
device) in the /etc/ttys file in single-user mode, after doing a
"mount -u /".  (BTW, this mount command produces complaints that the root
filesystem is not clean, which I don't understand because the root partition
had been fsck'ed and was mounted read-only before this point.)

I also tried creating a symbolic link named /dev/ttyE0 that pointed to
/dev/ttye0.  That silenced the messages about the missing device, but
it also did not produce a login prompt on the console.

I also tried changing the ttyE0 entry in the /dev/ttys file to ttye0,
and that also failed to produce a login prompt on the console.  This
is the setting that I found on a working NetBSD mac68k 1.4 installation,
and a 1.4.2 installation with a 1.5 alpha kernel.

Seems like something about the console has changed since 1.4.2, without
being thoroughly tested recently.

Was my change to the ttys file the correct action to take?  From the
comments, I take it that there's compelling reason not to use the
console device.  What would be the correct solution?

Thanks,

Paul