from the termios manpage:
Another dependency is whether the O_NONBLOCK flag is set by open() or
fcntl(). If the O_NONBLOCK flag is clear, then the read request is
blocked until data is available or a signal has been received. If the
O_NONBLOCK flag is set, then the read request is completed, without
blocking, in one of three ways:
1. If there is enough data available to satisfy the entire
request, and the read completes successfully the number of
bytes read is returned.
2. If there is not enough data available to satisfy the entire
request, and the read completes successfully, having read as
much data as possible, the number of bytes read is returned.
3. If there is no data available, the read returns -1, with errno
set to EAGAIN.
can you check if this is the case? cheers.
Edit: OP traced back the problem to a linking with pthreads that caused the read function to block. By upgrading to OpenBSD >5.2 this issue was resolved by the change to the new rthreads implementation as the default threading library on openbsd. more info on guenther@ EuroBSD2012 slides