[gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[David Relson]

Greetings,

This morning, all of the sudden, I'm encountering process creation
problems.  The problems seem to affect only bash.  There are no problems
starting X applications like firefox and open office.

FWIW, my usual "update world" was done yesterday (and emerged the
packages listed at the end of this message). 

Anybody have suggestions regarding the symptoms given below?

Regards,

David

### symptoms ###

Attempting to start a new terminal session from an existing terminal
session (using ctrl-shft-N). 

   There was an error creating the child process for this terminal

and a terminal window without a prompt (not running bash??)  The same
message and window appear when I try to start one from the GNOME menu.

From emacs, running the shell command produces the following message
(and a usable shell window):

  bash: cannot set terminal process group (-1): Invalid argument
  bash: no job control in this shell

ssh into box gives:

	PTY allocation request failed on channel 0

Neither dmesg nor /var/log/messages has any unusual messages


### recently emerged packages ###

app-crypt/gnupg-2.0.14
app-text/poppler-0.12.3-r3
dev-libs/libgcrypt-1.4.5
dev-util/global-5.7.7
media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.21a
media-sound/alsa-headers-1.0.21
media-sound/alsa-utils-1.0.21-r1
sys-apps/util-linux-2.16.2
virtual/poppler-0.12.3-r1
virtual/poppler-glib-0.12.3-r2
virtual/poppler-utils-0.12.3-r1

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[Willie Wong]

Stabbing in the dark here: I don't think this is a bash problem. Most
likely something else broke on your system. 

On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 08:33:44AM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> ssh into box gives:
> 
> 	PTY allocation request failed on channel 0

Issue 'ls /dev/pt*' for me?

> ### recently emerged packages ###

How complete is this list? I assume you didn't reboot recently into a
new kernel? Did you upgrade udev by any chance? The only other suspect
that I see is util-linux, but you are on the stable version. 
> 
> app-crypt/gnupg-2.0.14
> app-text/poppler-0.12.3-r3
> dev-libs/libgcrypt-1.4.5
> dev-util/global-5.7.7
> media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.21a
> media-sound/alsa-headers-1.0.21
> media-sound/alsa-utils-1.0.21-r1
> sys-apps/util-linux-2.16.2
> virtual/poppler-0.12.3-r1
> virtual/poppler-glib-0.12.3-r2
> virtual/poppler-utils-0.12.3-r1

Cheers, 

W

-- 
Willie W. Wong                                     wwong@math.princeton.edu
Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire 
         et vice versa   ~~~  I. Newton

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[Willie Wong]

On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 08:33:44AM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> This morning, all of the sudden, I'm encountering process creation
> problems.  The problems seem to affect only bash.  There are no problems
> starting X applications like firefox and open office.

Also, can you log-in on a vc? If you are in X, hit ctrl-alt-f2 and try
to log into the console?

W
-- 
Willie W. Wong                                     wwong@math.princeton.edu
Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire 
         et vice versa   ~~~  I. Newton

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[Willie Wong]

On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 10:00:33AM -0500, Willie Wong wrote:
> How complete is this list? I assume you didn't reboot recently into a
> new kernel? 

Also, if you did reboot recently (maybe into the same kernel), cat
/etc/fstab for me?

W
-- 
Willie W. Wong                                     wwong@math.princeton.edu
Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire 
         et vice versa   ~~~  I. Newton

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[David Relson]

H'lo Willie,

The output of "ls /dev/pt*" is suspiciously short:
 
   root@osage / # ls /dev/pts
      /dev/ptmx

      /dev/pts:

udev was emerged twice quite recently:  
  1/26 upgrade from 141-r1 to 146-r2
  1/32 downgrade from 146-r2 to 146-r1

My computer was last rebooted 21 days ago.

As you seem to suspect udev and /dev/pt* seems b0rked, I'll try
downgrading back to 141-r1 to see what happens.

Regards,

David


On Sat, 6 Feb 2010 10:00:33 -0500
Willie Wong wrote:

> Stabbing in the dark here: I don't think this is a bash problem. Most
> likely something else broke on your system. 
> 
> On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 08:33:44AM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> > ssh into box gives:
> > 
> > 	PTY allocation request failed on channel 0
> 
> Issue 'ls /dev/pt*' for me?
> 
> > ### recently emerged packages ###
> 
> How complete is this list? I assume you didn't reboot recently into a
> new kernel? Did you upgrade udev by any chance? The only other suspect
> that I see is util-linux, but you are on the stable version. 
> > 
> > app-crypt/gnupg-2.0.14
> > app-text/poppler-0.12.3-r3
> > dev-libs/libgcrypt-1.4.5
> > dev-util/global-5.7.7
> > media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.21a
> > media-sound/alsa-headers-1.0.21
> > media-sound/alsa-utils-1.0.21-r1
> > sys-apps/util-linux-2.16.2
> > virtual/poppler-0.12.3-r1
> > virtual/poppler-glib-0.12.3-r2
> > virtual/poppler-utils-0.12.3-r1
> 
> Cheers, 
> 
> W
> 
> -- 
> Willie W. Wong
> wwong@math.princeton.edu Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes
> quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire et vice versa   ~~~  I. Newton

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[David Relson]

On Sat, 6 Feb 2010 10:13:02 -0500
Willie Wong wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 10:00:33AM -0500, Willie Wong wrote:
> > How complete is this list? I assume you didn't reboot recently into
> > a new kernel? 
> 
> Also, if you did reboot recently (maybe into the same kernel), cat
> /etc/fstab for me?

It's been 3 weeks ...

FWIW, I've downgraded udev from 146-r1 to 141 (what was running 2
weeks ago) with no change in system behavior.  Upgrading back to
146-r1 didn't fix or break anything additional.

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[David Relson]

On Sat, 6 Feb 2010 10:11:07 -0500
Willie Wong wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 08:33:44AM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> > This morning, all of the sudden, I'm encountering process creation
> > problems.  The problems seem to affect only bash.  There are no
> > problems starting X applications like firefox and open office.
> 
> Also, can you log-in on a vc? If you are in X, hit ctrl-alt-f2 and try
> to log into the console?

Works fine ...

Looking at "ls -l /dev/vc*" I see timestamps of "2010-02-02 23:34".  At
23:31 that day, 

   openrc was upgraded from 0.3.0-r1 to 0.6.0-r1.
   sysvinit was upgraded from 2.86-r10 to 2.87-r

The openrc upgrade occured because I had noticed automounting of my
flash drives had stopped working.  Attempts to restart udev had
failed because /etc/init.d/sysfs wasn't present and that generated a
baselayout related complaint (because I installed baselayout-2 months
ago).  Aren't dependencies wonderful?

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[Willie Wong]

On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 04:08:58PM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> The output of "ls /dev/pt*" is suspiciously short:
>  
>    root@osage / # ls /dev/pts
>       /dev/ptmx
> 
>       /dev/pts:

That's it? There's nothing under /dev/pts? And you have terminals
running in X?

> > On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 08:33:44AM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> > > This morning, all of the sudden, I'm encountering process creation
> > > problems.  The problems seem to affect only bash.  There are no
> > > problems starting X applications like firefox and open office.
> > 
> > Also, can you log-in on a vc? If you are in X, hit ctrl-alt-f2 and try
> > to log into the console?
> 
> Works fine ...
> 
> Looking at "ls -l /dev/vc*" I see timestamps of "2010-02-02 23:34".  At
> 23:31 that day, 
> 
>    openrc was upgraded from 0.3.0-r1 to 0.6.0-r1.
>    sysvinit was upgraded from 2.86-r10 to 2.87-r

This is possibly a problem. I am guessing that if you issue 'mount',
devpts is not mounted. The mounting of that pseudo filesystem is
relegated to /etc/init.d/devfs, which belongs to openrc. 

What is the output of 'rc-status sysinit'?

W

-- 
Willie W. Wong                                     wwong@math.princeton.edu
Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire 
         et vice versa   ~~~  I. Newton

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[David Relson]

On Sat, 6 Feb 2010 17:27:14 -0500
Willie Wong wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 04:08:58PM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> > The output of "ls /dev/pt*" is suspiciously short:
> >  
> >    root@osage / # ls /dev/pts
> >       /dev/ptmx
> > 
> >       /dev/pts:
> 
> That's it? There's nothing under /dev/pts? And you have terminals
> running in X?
> 
> > > On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 08:33:44AM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> > > > This morning, all of the sudden, I'm encountering process
> > > > creation problems.  The problems seem to affect only bash.
> > > > There are no problems starting X applications like firefox and
> > > > open office.
> > > 
> > > Also, can you log-in on a vc? If you are in X, hit ctrl-alt-f2
> > > and try to log into the console?
> > 
> > Works fine ...
> > 
> > Looking at "ls -l /dev/vc*" I see timestamps of "2010-02-02
> > 23:34".  At 23:31 that day, 
> > 
> >    openrc was upgraded from 0.3.0-r1 to 0.6.0-r1.
> >    sysvinit was upgraded from 2.86-r10 to 2.87-r
> 
> This is possibly a problem. I am guessing that if you issue 'mount',
> devpts is not mounted. The mounting of that pseudo filesystem is
> relegated to /etc/init.d/devfs, which belongs to openrc. 
> 
> What is the output of 'rc-status sysinit'?

Hi Willie,

Your replies are much appreciated as we're in an area of Linux about
which I'm poorly informed.

Output (below) of "rc-status sysinit" indicated devfs stopped, so I
started devfs (which didn't change /dev/pt*), then restarted udev
(which didn't affect /dev/pt*).

Regards,

David

### output follows ###


root@osage portage # rc-status sysinit
Runlevel: sysinit
 dmesg [  stopped  ]
 udev [  started  ]
 devfs [  stopped  ]

root@osage portage # service devfs status
 * status: started

root@osage portage # rc-status sysinit
Runlevel: sysinit
 dmesg [  stopped  ]
 udev [  started  ]
 devfs [  started  ]

root@osage portage # ls /dev/pt*
/dev/ptmx

/dev/pts:

root@osage portage # service udev restart
 * WARNING: you are stopping a sysinit service
 * Stopping udevd ... [ ok ]
 * Starting udevd ... [ ok ]
 * Populating /dev with existing devices through uevents ... [ ok ]
 * Waiting for uevents to be processed ... [ ok ]

root@osage portage # ls /dev/pt*
/dev/ptmx

/dev/pts:
root@osage portage # 

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[Willie Wong]

On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 06:29:27PM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> Your replies are much appreciated as we're in an area of Linux about
> which I'm poorly informed.
> 
> Output (below) of "rc-status sysinit" indicated devfs stopped, so I
> started devfs (which didn't change /dev/pt*), then restarted udev
> (which didn't affect /dev/pt*).

Right, but can you ssh in to the machine now (or open a terminal
emulator in X)? 

/dev/pts is just the mount point for the devpts pseudo filesystem. In
modern versions of linux the pts devices are created on-the-fly when
requested (as opposed to other versions and some modern unixes where
there will be a fixed number of device nodes under /dev/pts or
equivalent). All that just goes to say that if /dev/pts is empty
right after you restart the devfs service, it is normal. A device file
should be created automatically now when userspace programs demand it.
(E.g. if you now ssh in, and if it succeeds, ls /dev/pts should show
one entry.) 

Try it, let me know if the problem is still there. 

Cheers, 

W
-- 
Willie W. Wong                                     wwong@math.princeton.edu
Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire 
         et vice versa   ~~~  I. Newton

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[David Relson]

On Sat, 6 Feb 2010 19:13:33 -0500
Willie Wong wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 06:29:27PM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> > Your replies are much appreciated as we're in an area of Linux about
> > which I'm poorly informed.
> > 
> > Output (below) of "rc-status sysinit" indicated devfs stopped, so I
> > started devfs (which didn't change /dev/pt*), then restarted udev
> > (which didn't affect /dev/pt*).
> 
> Right, but can you ssh in to the machine now (or open a terminal
> emulator in X)? 
> 
> /dev/pts is just the mount point for the devpts pseudo filesystem. In
> modern versions of linux the pts devices are created on-the-fly when
> requested (as opposed to other versions and some modern unixes where
> there will be a fixed number of device nodes under /dev/pts or
> equivalent). All that just goes to say that if /dev/pts is empty
> right after you restart the devfs service, it is normal. A device file
> should be created automatically now when userspace programs demand it.
> (E.g. if you now ssh in, and if it succeeds, ls /dev/pts should show
> one entry.) 
> 
> Try it, let me know if the problem is still there. 

Nope.  Both ssh and X terminal emulators are still broken.  No change
in behavior.

FWIW, most of the entries in /dev are timestamped 02/02 23:34 which is
when I updated udev earlier this week. Today's upgrade/downgrade emerge
hasn't affected the timestamps.

A comparison of /etc/udev/rules.d to a saved copy didn't show
much.  The only puzzling difference is:
  --- 90-hal.rules	(revision 51)
   +++ 90-hal.rules	(working copy)
   @@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
    # pass all events to the HAL daemon
   -RUN+="socket:/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event"
   +RUN+="socket:@/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event"

removing the "@" and restarting udev hasn't helped.  Since the rule is
hal related, I also restarted hald -- which hasn't helped.

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[James Ausmus]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2106 bytes --]

On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 8:07 PM, David Relson <relson@osagesoftware.com>wrote:

> On Sat, 6 Feb 2010 19:13:33 -0500
> Willie Wong wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 06:29:27PM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> > > Your replies are much appreciated as we're in an area of Linux about
> > > which I'm poorly informed.
> > >
> > > Output (below) of "rc-status sysinit" indicated devfs stopped, so I
> > > started devfs (which didn't change /dev/pt*), then restarted udev
> > > (which didn't affect /dev/pt*).
> >
> > Right, but can you ssh in to the machine now (or open a terminal
> > emulator in X)?
> >
> > /dev/pts is just the mount point for the devpts pseudo filesystem. In
> > modern versions of linux the pts devices are created on-the-fly when
> > requested (as opposed to other versions and some modern unixes where
> > there will be a fixed number of device nodes under /dev/pts or
> > equivalent). All that just goes to say that if /dev/pts is empty
> > right after you restart the devfs service, it is normal. A device file
> > should be created automatically now when userspace programs demand it.
> > (E.g. if you now ssh in, and if it succeeds, ls /dev/pts should show
> > one entry.)
> >
> > Try it, let me know if the problem is still there.
>
> Nope.  Both ssh and X terminal emulators are still broken.  No change
> in behavior.
>
> FWIW, most of the entries in /dev are timestamped 02/02 23:34 which is
> when I updated udev earlier this week. Today's upgrade/downgrade emerge
> hasn't affected the timestamps.
>
> A comparison of /etc/udev/rules.d to a saved copy didn't show
> much.  The only puzzling difference is:
>  --- 90-hal.rules      (revision 51)
>   +++ 90-hal.rules     (working copy)
>   @@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
>    # pass all events to the HAL daemon
>   -RUN+="socket:/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event"
>   +RUN+="socket:@/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event"
>
> removing the "@" and restarting udev hasn't helped.  Since the rule is
> hal related, I also restarted hald -- which hasn't helped.
>
>
What happens if you do:

mount -t devpts none /dev/pts

Does the problem go away?

-James

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2730 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[David Relson]

On Sun, 7 Feb 2010 02:20:19 -0800
James Ausmus wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 8:07 PM, David Relson
> <relson@osagesoftware.com>wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 6 Feb 2010 19:13:33 -0500
> > Willie Wong wrote:
> >
> > > On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 06:29:27PM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> > > > Your replies are much appreciated as we're in an area of Linux
> > > > about which I'm poorly informed.
> > > >
> > > > Output (below) of "rc-status sysinit" indicated devfs stopped,
> > > > so I started devfs (which didn't change /dev/pt*), then
> > > > restarted udev (which didn't affect /dev/pt*).
> > >
> > > Right, but can you ssh in to the machine now (or open a terminal
> > > emulator in X)?
> > >
> > > /dev/pts is just the mount point for the devpts pseudo
> > > filesystem. In modern versions of linux the pts devices are
> > > created on-the-fly when requested (as opposed to other versions
> > > and some modern unixes where there will be a fixed number of
> > > device nodes under /dev/pts or equivalent). All that just goes to
> > > say that if /dev/pts is empty right after you restart the devfs
> > > service, it is normal. A device file should be created
> > > automatically now when userspace programs demand it. (E.g. if you
> > > now ssh in, and if it succeeds, ls /dev/pts should show one
> > > entry.)
> > >
> > > Try it, let me know if the problem is still there.
> >
> > Nope.  Both ssh and X terminal emulators are still broken.  No
> > change in behavior.
> >
> > FWIW, most of the entries in /dev are timestamped 02/02 23:34 which
> > is when I updated udev earlier this week. Today's upgrade/downgrade
> > emerge hasn't affected the timestamps.
> >
> > A comparison of /etc/udev/rules.d to a saved copy didn't show
> > much.  The only puzzling difference is:
> >  --- 90-hal.rules      (revision 51)
> >   +++ 90-hal.rules     (working copy)
> >   @@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
> >    # pass all events to the HAL daemon
> >   -RUN+="socket:/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event"
> >   +RUN+="socket:@/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event"
> >
> > removing the "@" and restarting udev hasn't helped.  Since the rule
> > is hal related, I also restarted hald -- which hasn't helped.
> >
> >
> What happens if you do:
> 
> mount -t devpts none /dev/pts
> 
> Does the problem go away?
> 
> -James

Eureka!  Problem fixed.

Looking in /etc/mtab, the last line is:

   none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0

Perhaps the mount devpts command should have been issued as part of
emerging udev, openrc, or sysinit ???  Should this be reported to
b.g.o.??

David

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[Willie Wong]

On Sun, Feb 07, 2010 at 09:35:54AM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> Looking in /etc/mtab, the last line is:
> 
>    none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
> 
> Perhaps the mount devpts command should have been issued as part of
> emerging udev, openrc, or sysinit ???  Should this be reported to
> b.g.o.??

Odd, that's one of the two things  /etc/init.d/devfs is supposed to
do. (The other is to mount tmpfs.) The whole point of that script is
to provide those two filesystems in case the user "forgot" to specify
them in /etc/fstab.

If this is reproducible (say, after next reboot devpts still doesn't
come up, while devfs is started), then something is wrong. Filing a
bug report likely won't help because it works on mostly everyone
else's system; you should probably ping the list again to find out
what the source of the problem is. 

A work around would be to just add the appropriate line to /etc/fstab.
the devfs script is smart enough to check if the devpts and tmpfs are
already mounted, so it should break anything additional.

Cheers,

W
-- 
Willie W. Wong                                     wwong@math.princeton.edu
Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire 
         et vice versa   ~~~  I. Newton

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[Helmut Jarausch]

On  7 Feb, David Relson wrote:
> On Sun, 7 Feb 2010 02:20:19 -0800
> James Ausmus wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 8:07 PM, David Relson
>> <relson@osagesoftware.com>wrote:
>> 
>> > On Sat, 6 Feb 2010 19:13:33 -0500
>> > Willie Wong wrote:
>> >
>> > > On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 06:29:27PM -0500, David Relson wrote:
>> > > > Your replies are much appreciated as we're in an area of Linux
>> > > > about which I'm poorly informed.
>> > > >
>> > > > Output (below) of "rc-status sysinit" indicated devfs stopped,
>> > > > so I started devfs (which didn't change /dev/pt*), then
>> > > > restarted udev (which didn't affect /dev/pt*).
>> > >
>> > > Right, but can you ssh in to the machine now (or open a terminal
>> > > emulator in X)?
>> > >
>> > > /dev/pts is just the mount point for the devpts pseudo
>> > > filesystem. In modern versions of linux the pts devices are
>> > > created on-the-fly when requested (as opposed to other versions
>> > > and some modern unixes where there will be a fixed number of
>> > > device nodes under /dev/pts or equivalent). All that just goes to
>> > > say that if /dev/pts is empty right after you restart the devfs
>> > > service, it is normal. A device file should be created
>> > > automatically now when userspace programs demand it. (E.g. if you
>> > > now ssh in, and if it succeeds, ls /dev/pts should show one
>> > > entry.)
>> > >
>> > > Try it, let me know if the problem is still there.
>> >
>> > Nope.  Both ssh and X terminal emulators are still broken.  No
>> > change in behavior.
>> >
>> > FWIW, most of the entries in /dev are timestamped 02/02 23:34 which
>> > is when I updated udev earlier this week. Today's upgrade/downgrade
>> > emerge hasn't affected the timestamps.
>> >
>> > A comparison of /etc/udev/rules.d to a saved copy didn't show
>> > much.  The only puzzling difference is:
>> >  --- 90-hal.rules      (revision 51)
>> >   +++ 90-hal.rules     (working copy)
>> >   @@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
>> >    # pass all events to the HAL daemon
>> >   -RUN+="socket:/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event"
>> >   +RUN+="socket:@/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event"
>> >
>> > removing the "@" and restarting udev hasn't helped.  Since the rule
>> > is hal related, I also restarted hald -- which hasn't helped.
>> >
>> >
>> What happens if you do:
>> 
>> mount -t devpts none /dev/pts
>> 
>> Does the problem go away?
>> 
>> -James
> 
> Eureka!  Problem fixed.
> 
> Looking in /etc/mtab, the last line is:
> 
>    none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
> 
> Perhaps the mount devpts command should have been issued as part of
> emerging udev, openrc, or sysinit ???  Should this be reported to
> b.g.o.??
> 
> David
> 

I have the following line in my /etc/fstab (I can't remember if I put it
there myself or not)

devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0

Since a "mount -a" is issued quite early during boot, this is mounted,
as well.

Helmut.

-- 
Helmut Jarausch

Lehrstuhl fuer Numerische Mathematik
RWTH - Aachen University
D 52056 Aachen, Germany

Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[Dale]

chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties:
> On  7 Feb, David Relson wrote:
>    
>> On Sun, 7 Feb 2010 02:20:19 -0800
>> James Ausmus wrote:
>>
>>      
>>> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 8:07 PM, David Relson
>>> <relson@osagesoftware.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>        
>>>> On Sat, 6 Feb 2010 19:13:33 -0500
>>>> Willie Wong wrote:
>>>>
>>>>          
>>>>> On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 06:29:27PM -0500, David Relson wrote:
>>>>>            
>>>>>> Your replies are much appreciated as we're in an area of Linux
>>>>>> about which I'm poorly informed.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Output (below) of "rc-status sysinit" indicated devfs stopped,
>>>>>> so I started devfs (which didn't change /dev/pt*), then
>>>>>> restarted udev (which didn't affect /dev/pt*).
>>>>>>              
>>>>> Right, but can you ssh in to the machine now (or open a terminal
>>>>> emulator in X)?
>>>>>
>>>>> /dev/pts is just the mount point for the devpts pseudo
>>>>> filesystem. In modern versions of linux the pts devices are
>>>>> created on-the-fly when requested (as opposed to other versions
>>>>> and some modern unixes where there will be a fixed number of
>>>>> device nodes under /dev/pts or equivalent). All that just goes to
>>>>> say that if /dev/pts is empty right after you restart the devfs
>>>>> service, it is normal. A device file should be created
>>>>> automatically now when userspace programs demand it. (E.g. if you
>>>>> now ssh in, and if it succeeds, ls /dev/pts should show one
>>>>> entry.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Try it, let me know if the problem is still there.
>>>>>            
>>>> Nope.  Both ssh and X terminal emulators are still broken.  No
>>>> change in behavior.
>>>>
>>>> FWIW, most of the entries in /dev are timestamped 02/02 23:34 which
>>>> is when I updated udev earlier this week. Today's upgrade/downgrade
>>>> emerge hasn't affected the timestamps.
>>>>
>>>> A comparison of /etc/udev/rules.d to a saved copy didn't show
>>>> much.  The only puzzling difference is:
>>>>   --- 90-hal.rules      (revision 51)
>>>>    +++ 90-hal.rules     (working copy)
>>>>    @@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
>>>>     # pass all events to the HAL daemon
>>>>    -RUN+="socket:/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event"
>>>>    +RUN+="socket:@/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event"
>>>>
>>>> removing the "@" and restarting udev hasn't helped.  Since the rule
>>>> is hal related, I also restarted hald -- which hasn't helped.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>          
>>> What happens if you do:
>>>
>>> mount -t devpts none /dev/pts
>>>
>>> Does the problem go away?
>>>
>>> -James
>>>        
>> Eureka!  Problem fixed.
>>
>> Looking in /etc/mtab, the last line is:
>>
>>     none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
>>
>> Perhaps the mount devpts command should have been issued as part of
>> emerging udev, openrc, or sysinit ???  Should this be reported to
>> b.g.o.??
>>
>> David
>>
>>      
> I have the following line in my /etc/fstab (I can't remember if I put it
> there myself or not)
>
> devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0
>
> Since a "mount -a" is issued quite early during boot, this is mounted,
> as well.
>
> Helmut.
>
>    

Here's something odd, I don't have that line in mine.

root@smoker / # cat /etc/fstab | grep /dev/pts
root@smoker / #

However it is mounted:

root@smoker / # mount | grep /dev/pts
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620)
root@smoker / #

Mine is a old install with a really old fstab so that may matter.  I'm 
still on the old baselayout and openrc too.

Dale

:-)  :-)