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@×××××××××××××.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