What causes "no TTY available on solaris" in hashicorp/packer?

Run Packer on a supported platform (Linux, macOS, Windows) where TTY allocation is implemented, and drive the Solaris machine remotely via a builder/communicator.

hashicorp/packer · error

no TTY available on solaris

Error message

no TTY available on solaris

What it means

openTTY is the platform-specific TTY opener for Solaris in this Packer build. Solaris has no implemented terminal-allocation helper, so the function unconditionally returns the error "no TTY available on solaris". Any code path that needs to allocate a TTY (typically for interactive commands or communicate plugins requiring a pseudoterminal) cannot run on Solaris builds of Packer.

Source

Thrown at tty_solaris.go:13

// Copyright IBM Corp. 2024, 2025
// SPDX-License-Identifier: BUSL-1.1

package main

import (
	"fmt"

	packersdk "github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-sdk/packer"
)

func openTTY() (packersdk.TTY, error) {
	return nil, fmt.Errorf("no TTY available on solaris")
}

View on GitHub (pinned to eb36e3c3e4)

Solutions

Run Packer on a supported platform (Linux, macOS, Windows) where TTY allocation is implemented, and drive the Solaris machine remotely via a builder/communicator.
Avoid features that require a TTY on the Solaris host: disable request_pty / interactive prompts in the relevant provisioner/communicator config.
If you must build from Solaris, run packer inside a Linux container/VM on the Solaris host.
Upstream: implement a Solaris TTY helper (e.g. via posix_openpt/pty wrapper) and add a tty_solaris.go implementation, or contribute a build tag change if not applicable.

Example fix

// before: requesting a TTY on a Solaris host
tty, err := openTTY() // err: no TTY available on solaris
// after: avoid TTY-dependent paths, e.g. run packer in a Linux container
// docker run --rm -v $PWD:/workspace -w /workspace golang:1.22 make dev

Defensive patterns

Strategy: fallback

Validate before calling

if runtime.GOOS == "solaris" {
    return errors.New("TTY-dependent features are unsupported on solaris; use a Linux/macOS/Windows host")
}

Type guard

func ttySupported() bool { return runtime.GOOS != "solaris" }

Try / catch

tty, err := openTTY()
if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "no TTY available on solaris") {
    tty = fallbackPtyAllocator() // or disable TTY-requiring feature
}

Prevention

Gate TTY-requiring configuration (request_pty, interactive prompts) behind runtime.GOOS checks.
Run packer from a supported OS; drive Solaris machines remotely instead.
Document platform constraints in CI agent provisioning so jobs don't land on Solaris runners.
Track upstream for a Solaris TTY implementation before enabling such features there.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling openTTY() on a Solaris build — i.e. any feature that requests a TTY via the packersdk.TTY interface (e.g. commands/components requiring an interactive terminal) — always returns this error since the Solaris implementation is a stub. tty_solaris.go:12-15.

Common situations: Running Packer on Solaris/illumos where a component or plugin requires TTY allocation (e.g. ssh with request_pty or interactive sudo); using a Solaris binary after workflows developed on Linux/macOS where the TTY path silently succeeds; CI agents on Solaris hitting an interactive-provisioner feature.

AI-assisted analysis of hashicorp/packer@eb36e3c3e4 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b81bc3a474813e54. Report an issue: GitHub.