On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Michael Mol <mike...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Michael Mol <mike...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 8:26 AM, Michael Mol <mike...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 11:48 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <can...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>>> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 10:45 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <can...@gmail.com> >>>> wrote: >>>>> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 9:35 PM, Michael Mol <mike...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>>> So, I botched the upgrade to udev-191. I thought I'd followed the >>>>>> steps, but I apparently only covered them for one machine, not both. >>>>>> >>>>>> The news item instructions specified that I had to remove >>>>>> udev-postmount from my runlevels. I didn't have udev-postmount in my >>>>>> runlevels, so I didn't remove it. Turns out, that dictum also applies >>>>>> to udev-mount. So after removing that[1], I was able to at least boot >>>>>> again. >>>>>> >>>>>> Udev also complained about DEVTMPFS not being enabled in the >>>>>> kernel.[2] I couldn't get into X, but I could log in via getty and a >>>>>> plain old vt, so I enabled it, rebuilt the kernel, installed it and >>>>>> rebooted...and now that's presumably covered. >>>>>> >>>>>> I'm now able to get into X, but when I try to run an xterm, it fails. >>>>>> Checking ~/.xsession_errors, I find: >>>>>> >>>>>> xterm: Error 32, error 2: No such file or directory >>>>>> Reason: get_pty: not enough ptys >>>>> >>>>> Do you have CONFIG_LEGACY_PTYS=y? If so, do you really need it? A >>>>> little over a year ago[1] I had an annoying issue for having that >>>>> option enabled in my kernel, with a lot of virtual ttys reported in >>>>> systemctl. This is a shot in the dark (I really don't know if it's >>>>> related to your problem), but perhaps having the LEGACY_PTYS option >>>>> enabled somehow depleted your available pseudo terminals (which any X >>>>> terminal needs to run)? I suppose screen is also out of the question >>>>> for the same reason. >>> >>> No, I don't have CONFIG_LEGACY_PTYs. I do have UNIX98 PTYs, and I >>> tried enabling alternate namespaces, but that didn't help either. >>> >>>> >>>> Also related, if you have LEGACY_PTYS: >>>> >>>> "LEGACY_PTY_COUNT: >>>> >>>> The maximum number of legacy PTYs that can be used at any one time. >>>> The default is 256, and should be more than enough. Embedded >>>> systems may want to reduce this to save memory. >>>> >>>> When not in use, each legacy PTY occupies 12 bytes on 32-bit >>>> architectures and 24 bytes on 64-bit architectures." >>> >>> Yeah, I'm not using CONFIG_LEGACY_PTY, so LEGACY_PTY_COUNT doesn't >>> even make itself available in menuconfig. >> >> Hm. Some googling suggests this might be a permissions issue. >> >> I do have consolekit enabled, but I'm using gdm, so I'd expect that to >> take care of itself. (Although screen fails to launch from vt1, so >> it's not a consolekit problem.) > > OK, it looks like /dev/pts is not mounted. But darned if I know > why...Isn't udev supposed to handle that?
SOLVED. Two pieces missing. One, I didn't notice the "unable to create /dev/pts" and "unable to create /dev/shm" messages in the boot sequence...and they didn't appear in /var/log/messages for whatever reason. Two, I'm not using an initramfs on this machine, so in *addition* to needing to have CONFIG_DEVTMPFS enabled, I also needed to have CONFIG_DEVTMPFS_MOUNT enabled. Rebuilding the kernel with that, and rebooting, seems to have fixed things. -- :wq