Re: [gentoo-user] trouble starting bash

[David Relson <relson@osagesoftware.com>]

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.