Legacy BSD PTYs instead of /dev/pts?

Question

I'm trying to use an old database that only accepts connections from legacy BSD style pseudo-terminals /dev/ttyp's or /dev/tty's. It does not recognise /dev/pts/9 style PTYs. Connections via SSH.

I last used it on RedHat Linux 7.2 in 2002 when I had to rebuild the kernel with Legacy PTYS support and then remove devpts from fstab. RHL then automatically fell back to using /dev/ttyp's. I need to use Debian now, and I'm trying this on Squeeze 6.0.7, but I'm willing to go back to Lenny or move up to Wheezy if it helps. I've rebuilt the 2.6.32 kernel with Legacy PTYS support, but I can't figure out how to force the use of the legacy ttyp's. menuconfig would not allow devpts to be excluded from the kernel.

In Squeeze, devpts is no longer mounted in fstab. I've found one init script which mounts devpts (/etc/rcS.d/S03mountdevsubfs.sh) and tried commenting-out the "domount devpts" line, and putting 'umount /dev/pts' into rc.local, but Squeeze will only give me a /dev/pts/9. I've grep'd the whole filesystem for "mount /dev/pts" with no luck.

Anyone got any ideas about how to force the use of the legacy BSD ttyp's for my SSH connections?

Answer 1

You can't do that without patching OpenSSH, which – in current versions – only uses BSD-style ptys if compiled on a system that doesn't support anything else (see openbsd-compat/bsd-openpty.c).