[Expectperl-discuss] Occasional Pty problems with Expect on FreeBSD. Please help me!

[Dave S. <kin...@ya...>]

Hi!

I really need some help, and am so glad that I've
finally found this discussion group!

I am using Perl and Expect to manage a simple test
infrastructure at my company. Every so often a cron
job fires off a Perl script. That script then executes
other Perl scripts, which monitor tests via Expect.
Most of those scripts start out by calling
Expect->spawn("ssh"), to ssh to another machine and
run/monitor their specific test.

Occasionally though, Expect's spawn routine dies with
one of two errors, both of which come from the Pty.pm
module. I can't figure out what they mean or how to
fix them though, which is driving me batty!

1) "Cannot open a pty".
   This comes from a failure of the pty_allocate
function, in the "new" subroutine of Pty.pm. My Pty.pm
is version 1.02. I cannot find the "pty_allocate"
subroutine in any .pm or .pl file on my system, so I
don't know why it is failing sometimes.

2) "Error: could not connect pty as controlling
terminal!"
   I see this one more often. It is also in Pty.pm, in
the make_slave_controlling_terminal subroutine.
According to the code, it comes from a failure to open
/dev/tty.

Can anyone help me? Expect is about the only tool I
can use for my testing infrastructure (that I know
about at least). But these occasional failures make my
infrastructure itself unreliable. I could really use
some assistance.

Thanks so much,
Dave

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