os.fork and pty.fork

[Eric Snow]

I am trying to wrap my head around an issue here that has to do with
running python without a tty.  I use pexpect to connect to ssh and run
some commands.  However, if my script runs from a process which I
forked using os.fork my pexpect spawn object can't open a good file
descriptor in which to run my ssh command, as far as I can tell.
pexpect uses pty.fork to fork the process, attach a tty, and run my
command in the child with os.exec.

When I go to expect something on the spawn object the read on the fd
of the child returns EOF, which indicates that the child's fd is
already closed before I did anything.  This is the point at which I am
trying to make sense of things.  pty.fork gave pexpect the child's fd
but does that fd actually go to a tty?  Does the fact that my use of
pexpect happens in a process which is not running in a tty, as it was
generated from os.fork?  It looks like pty.fork tries to use
os.forkpty but I am not sure how an existing tty plays in to getting a
new tty for the child process...

Any insight into os.fork and pty.fork would be great.  Thanks.

-eric