how to run dropbear on a system with a R/O /dev?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  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.

rday
--

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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry:
    Have classroom, will lecture.

http://crashcourse.ca                          Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
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