Strange /dev/pts/ problem -- solved (sort of)
Reminder -- The problem was the following: If no terminal is already opened and an ordinary user tries to open a wterm, it will fail with the message: "wterm: can't open slave tty /dev/pts/0". It would work if root tries to open it. Likewise, an ordinary user cannot open /dev/pts/1, but root can. At this point, it gets really strange: assume that root has already opened two terminals, so that the first free slave terminal is /dev/pts/2. This one (and apparently all the terminals numbered above 1) can be opened by an ordinary user... Solution: After experimenting, it became clear that devfsd was the culprit: turning it off solved the problem. In fact, I had set it to store in /dev-state/ the permissions of newly created devices, and restore automatically these permissions later. Problem: it has been doing that also for the slave terminals. It happened that /dev-state/pts/0 and /dev-state/pts/1 belong to root... They were therefore recreated with ownership root, because of my setup of devfsd, and an ordinary user could not open them. For the time being, I just turned off this feature of devfsd, and cleaned up /dev-state/ and that solved my problem. I still have the following question: I would like to be able to use this feature of devfsd (automatically save/restore the permissions of some devices) because it is useful in some instances, but would like to avoid any nasty interference with the /dev/pts/'s. How should I setup the config file devfsd.conf ? Francois -- François Gelis / BNL - Nuclear Theory / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Strange /dev/pts/ problem
To quote Francois Gelis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, # I am running libc6 version 2.2.1-1, with a kernel 2.4.0 in which I have # configured the use of the devfs architecture. The problem sounds like it might be because you're not running 'devfsd'. 'apt-get install devfsd', and reboot. If you're not using Woody or Sid, read http://dharris.freeshell.org/linux/index.html (the first blurb) to see how to (relatively) safely getting a Woody/Sid package on your Potato box. David Barclay Harris, Clan Barclay Aut agere, aut mori. (Either action, or death.)
Strange /dev/pts/ problem
Hi, I have been experiencing a strange problem lately on my debian laptop. I am not sure whether it is debian related or kernel related, but I could not find any mention of such a problem on the kernel archives, so I am trying to ask here. Here is the problem: If no terminal is already opened and an ordinary user tries to open a wterm, it will fail with the message: "wterm: can't open slave tty /dev/pts/0". It would work if root tries to open it. Likewise, an ordinary user cannot open /dev/pts/1, but root can. At this point, it gets really strange: assume that root has already opened two terminals, so that the first free slave terminal is /dev/pts/2. This one (and apparently all the terminals numbered above 1) can be opened by an ordinary user... I did not realize this problem until now because I was using an old version of aterm that does not use the UNIX98 PTY's, so I cannot tell if it is due to the last kernel change (to 2.4.0). This behaviour is consistent among all the terminal emulators that have been compiled to use the new framework: xterm, aterm, rxvt, wterm all behave the same. I am running libc6 version 2.2.1-1, with a kernel 2.4.0 in which I have configured the use of the devfs architecture. Any ideas ? Please also CC answers to me, since I do not read actively the zillions of messages going through this list. Thanks, Francois -- François Gelis / BNL - Nuclear Theory / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
