Problems with /dev/tty and stdout

[Glen Eustace]

The following problem has been occuring intermittently ever since we took
delivery of our machine, a 9815 with OSx4.4c. Software support staff at
Trilogy, our Pyramid Distributor have been unable to duplicate it and
have no clues as to what is actually happening. My question is, Has any
one else seen this behaviour and if so what is causing it, i.e. can it be
fixed?

Full Backups on the machine are done in single-user mode with cpio, at
times when cpio exceeds the length of a tape it will ask for another
tape, the operator being expected to reply. However cpio aborts with an
error saying that it cannot open /dev/tty???. The permissions all look
correct and in single-user the console is logged in as root anyway!
Another symptom is that other programs also fail, i.e. trying to do a
'pg' the error 'Cannot reopen stdout' occurs???

There does not appear to be any reason for this problem, the only course
of remedial action is to reboot.

--
  Glen Eustace, Software Manager, Computer Centre, Massey University,
   Palmerston North, New Zealand. Phone: +64 63 69099 x7440 GMT+12
             E-Mail via Internet: G.Eustace at massey.ac.nz
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