From: Ted Bullock <tbullock@comlore.com>
Subject: getty: check login_tty() failure
To: tech@openbsd.org
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2026 11:53:17 -0600

Hi,

I was reworking my X login environment and ran into a problem where
getty repeatedly reported:

    /dev/console: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Tracing it showed that opening /dev/console succeeded, but login_tty()
failed at TIOCSCTTY with EPERM. Getty ignores that return value and goes
on to call tcgetattr() on its inherited stdin, producing the misleading
ENOTTY error.

This checks the return from login_tty() and exits. It does not address
the underlying console/session conflict but that is probably just
something I broke that exposed this defect.

Ted

--- libexec/getty/main.c
+++ libexec/getty/main.c
@@ -247,7 +247,10 @@
 				repcnt++;
 				sleep(60);
 			}
-			login_tty(i);
+			if (login_tty(i) == -1) {
+				syslog(LOG_ERR, "%s: login_tty: %m", ttyn);
+				exit(1);
+			}
 		}
 	}