Server refused to start a shell/command (Buildroot - RPi)

Kevin Hill dropbear at procountsoftware.co.uk
Wed Jan 14 21:54:21 AWST 2015


I found this post from 2006 !!!!

http://lists.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/pipermail/dropbear/2006q1/000366.html

It suggests: "So.. configure with --disable-openpty helped and it works 
perfectly now."

What does this do? Is it still relevant?

Thanks,
Kevin


On 2015-01-14 13:31, dropbear at procountsoftware.co.uk wrote:
> df shows /dev having about 90MB in size and 0% used. I think /dev 
> type is
> set to tmpfs in buildroot(?). It appears to be r/w.
>
> Original email:
> -----------------
> From: Matt Johnston matt at ucc.asn.au
> Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 21:14:43 +0800
> To: dropbear at ucc.asn.au, dropbear at procountsoftware.co.uk
> Subject: Re: Server refused to start a shell/command (Buildroot - 
> RPi)
>
>
> My guess would be that /dev is full. Running “df� should show 
> amounts
> of free space.
>
> Cheers,
> Matt
>
>> On Wed 14/1/2015, at 5:42 am, Kevin Hill
> <dropbear at procountsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> After logging in successfully the following log messages are 
>> indicative
> of my problem:
>>
>> pty_allocate: openpty: No space left on device
>> No pty was allocated, couldn't execute
>> Exit (root): Exited normally.
>>
>> PuTTY gets the messages:
>> Server refused to allocate pty
>> Server refused to start a shell/command.
>>
>> So how do I fix this?
>> Which device is it talking about?
>> My buildroot system is running from initramfs.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Kevin
>>
>> On 2015-01-13 13:35, Matt Johnston wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> If you run “dropbear -F -E� (kill the existing server process 
>>> first)
>>> then it will run in the foreground and print logging. That should
>>> suggest what’s going wrong. Alternatively it might already be 
>>> logging
>>> to somewhere in /var/log depending if syslog is running.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Matt
>>>
>>>> On Tue 13/1/2015, at 9:24 pm, dropbear at procountsoftware.co.uk 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I have a minimalistic buildroot system for the Raspberry Pi and 
>>>> would
> like
>>>> to add a dropbear ssh server to it that is started and is 
>>>> available from
>>>> boot, but for now I'm just trying to enable it manually and I'm 
>>>> having a
>>>> few problems.
>>>>
>>>> I enabled dropbear within 'make menuconfig' and rebuilt buildroot. 
>>>> It
>>>> downloaded dropbear 2013.58 which I know is a little old, but it 
>>>> should
>>>> still work, right?
>>>> After booting my new system I didn't use S50dropbear itself but 
>>>> tried
> to do
>>>> things manually. I created /etc/dropbear and within there I 
>>>> created the
>>>> keys necessary for dropbear using:
>>>>
>>>> dropbearkey -t rsa -f dropbear_rsa_host_key
>>>> dropbearkey -t dss -f dropbear_dss_host_key
>>>>
>>>> Then I executed dropbear (no arguments) and I could see it in the
> process
>>>> list.
>>>>
>>>> When I tried to connect to it from Putty, I got the following 
>>>> error:
>>>> "Server refused to allocate pty" which I discovered was possibly 
>>>> due to
> not
>>>> having a suitable mountpoint.
>>>> So I added the following entry to FSTAB (as per a google post I 
>>>> found):
>>>>
>>>>    none            /dev/pts        devpts        gid=5,mode=620    
>>>> 0 0
>>>>
>>>> Now the error has changed to "Server refused to start a 
>>>> shell/command"
> and
>>>> I haven't been able to find a solution. I can connect to the Pi 
>>>> using
>>>> WinSCP over SCP fine, but I really want a command shell using 
>>>> PuTTY.
>>>>
>>>> This may be more to do with my minimalistic buildroot 
>>>> configuration than
>>>> anything else, but this is my first buildroot build so I'm a bit 
>>>> of a
>>>> newbie. My starting point was the buildroot configuration used to 
>>>> create
>>>> the RPi NOOBS recovery program.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 
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