Re: Gnome-Terminal/VTE not working for non-root user

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 02:01:55AM -0500 or thereabouts, David Murphy wrote:
> Hi folks. I'm running a Linux From Scratch system. This problem plagued me 
> for a while at Gnome 2.2, and it's still around after an upgrade to 2.4.
> When I execute gnome-terminal, it pulls up a terminal window, but then 
> gives me nothing. The cursor blinks away at the upper-left corner of the 
> window, but I never get a prompt, and it won't accept any input. Executing 
> vte has identical symptoms (though a different-looking window). This 
> happens on my non-root user, but the terminals work just fine as root. 
> Sounds like a permission problem, but examining a few obvious suspects 
> produced nothing. I found a similar problem discussed long ago in the list 
> archives, but I didn't get anything out of that.
> Basically, to start with, can someone give me a brief list of possibilites 
> for file permission problems?

To narrow it down: does it happen with konsole (KDE's terminal) and
with xterm too? If these are not on your panel menus, you could 
start them via the "command line applet" or whatever it's called.

The long-ago one might have been something to do with the 
permissions on /dev/ptmx on Linux 2.2 systems? Should be 
666 (owner.group: root.root). It's still that on my Linux 2.4
machine. If you have LinuxFromScratch, then does that mean 
you have a 2.6 kernel? I don't know anything about changes 
in that. 

Not heard of the /dev/ptmx one cropping up for a year or so, 
but I have vague memories of it from some time ago.


> Another bug from 2.2 (haven't tested it in 2.4)... as non-root, if I opened 
> two terminal windows and then closed one, Gnome would die, and gdm would 
> recycle to the login screen. Don't know if that's related or not.

Erm, wow. That sounds like an X crash to me. At least, an X crash
is often what causes the symptoms of "GDM recycles to the login 
screen": GDM checks to see whether X is running. If X is not 
running, then GDM restarts it, and throws up the graphical login
screen. Hence, in the wake of a crash, GDM restarts X.

If this happens to you now, I would look at your X error log.
I forget where GDM puts it, but there is definitely one around
somewhere to look at. 

Telsa