[comp.sys.mips] "Timer expired" errno on pty ioctl in xterm??

jmsellens@watdragon.waterloo.edu (John M. Sellens) (11/06/90)

We're having a problem with MIT xterm on our big MIPS with 4.51 (I think).

The xterm is using the BSD style pty devices, and often, when the machine
is busy (i.e. a lot of pty's in use), xterm fails on startup with
    xterm: Error 23, errno 62: Timer expired
as a result of this ioctl failing:
    if (ioctl (tty, TIOCSETP, (char *)&sg) == -1)
	HsSysError (cp_pipe[1], ERROR_TIOCSETP);
where tty is the fd of the slave side of the pty (e.g. /dev/ttyr2).

I haven't gone way into the thing to figure out exactly what parameters
it is trying to set, but it shouldn't be anything really weird.  I was
wondering if some kernel config parameter needs to be boosted to allow
more streams resources, or more BSD style pty's, but we couldn't find
anything too useful.  I wonder if we have only the BSD p and q pty's
configured, and when we try to use ptyr[0123] etc we hit problems?

Any ideas?

Thanks very much
John Sellens
U of Waterloo
jmsellens@dragon.waterloo.edu