server refused to allocate pty

hagaygo · January 28, 2019 at 6:29 AM

Hi everyone,

Been using Libreelec since version 7.X.

I had 2 RPI 2 running it just fine.

When 8.24 was out i bought a RPI 3 B model.

8.25 was released to add better support for RPI 3 B, so i installed 8.25 on it.

As testing running the new device i noticed that after random amount of days i can not login to SSH and getting the error of "server refused to allocate pty" right after login.

Its never happened before, after a while i upgraded (to 8.25) the other RPI 2 box (which was on 8.24) and i started getting the same error (after few days of running).

I figured its some bug on 8.25.

A week ago i upgraded my 2 devices to 8.95.003 , i still get the same results , after few days , after ssh login i get this error.

Only way to fix it is to restart the device (pulling the power plug).

As far i can see , KODI works just fine while this problem occurs.

I can live with this problem , but i suspect its just the "tip of the iceberg" for other more low level problem.

Any thoughts ?

Keep up the good work.

**Klojum** · January 28, 2019 at 6:57 AM Official Post

I can't remember having any problems myself with connecting via SSH to a RPi device with a default LibreELEC install, so I'm not sure what changed on your setups. Is there anything you altered or added that might confuse the SSH handshake?

How about providing a kodi.log via a pastebin website, and perhaps we spot something weird?

hagaygo · January 28, 2019 at 11:01 AM

As i mentioned KODI is working just fine.

While taking your advice and checking the log and since I VPN to my home , the SSH is not accessible , so i tried scp (winscp) and it works just fine (i can browse all folders and download/upload files).

I guess its a problem with the SSH session itself ?

I am not a Linux expert but without ssh access or console access , how can i debug the problem ?

st there "OS level" log in libreelec so i can maybe see what causes the "server refused to allocate pty" error ?

**chewitt** · January 28, 2019 at 2:23 PM Official Post

Check the SSH client is current/updated. Over time the default cipher suites used with SSH change to drop support for older untrusted ciphers and old clients might not like the newer defaults. Clear any cached keys for the same reason.

**vpeter** · January 28, 2019 at 2:31 PM

chewitt: This happens after some time. After boot he can log in. So it should not be client issue.

hagaygo: You could restart SSH server daily if this would help.

**chewitt** · January 28, 2019 at 2:44 PM Official Post

Degradation over time sounds like a resource consumption issue, e.g. free memory being exhausted and the OS being unable to service requests. If there was a general issue with 8.2.5 or even the current beta we'd know about it (due to the number of active installs). These things are normally hard to pin down but the nature of LE's packaging means everyone's base (read-only OS) install looks the same so it's more likely to be the result of other software installed, e.g. add-ons.

hagaygo · February 3, 2019 at 9:10 AM

Thanks everybody for your answers.

I think i found the problem , its related to addon , default settings leaves the daemon running , when i set it to stop when not used , the problem seem to go away. (still checking , but results seems promising)

The version switching i mentioned was about the same time i started using plexus so it kinda threw me off

**chewitt** · February 3, 2019 at 5:16 PM Official Post

Piracy add-on's are self-inflicted pain. No further support will be provided until you provide a debug log showing a clean system.