can't open a terminal on Gnome 2.30 [solved]

Message

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Sat May 15, 2010 2:07 pm

Hello,

When I open a terminal as a normal user I get this message :

There is an error creating the child process for the terminal.

When I try to open xterm No screen and no error message.

Roelof

Rexilion · Post by **Rexilion** » Sat May 15, 2010 2:46 pm

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... ost1075626

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Sun May 16, 2010 10:07 am

Hello,

I changed the stab so devpts is mounted but the error message stays.

Roelof

Rexilion · Post by **Rexilion** » Sun May 16, 2010 11:31 am

Did you try rebuilding the application? (revdep-rebuild?)

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Sun May 16, 2010 11:54 am

Helllo

Revdep rebuild found no errors,

What I find wierd is that root can open a terminal but as user I can't.

Roelof

Rexilion · Post by **Rexilion** » Sun May 16, 2010 12:41 pm

Maybe gnome-terminal is using video acceleration (since it's 2.30?) are you in the video group (as a normal user)?

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Sun May 16, 2010 2:23 pm

Hello,

Nope,

As a normal user im a member of these groups.

wheel audio users

Roelof

Rexilion · Post by **Rexilion** » Sun May 16, 2010 3:27 pm

Then please try adding your user to the video group.

usermod example - Add a existing user to existing group

Add existing user tony to ftp supplementary/secondary group with usermod command using -a option ~ i.e. add the user to the supplemental group(s). Use only with -G option :
# usermod -a -G ftp tony

So:

Code: Select all

usermod -a -G video roelof

Should do the trick. Do not forget to reboot to make the change go in effect.

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Mon May 17, 2010 7:35 am

Helllo Rexillon.

Sorry but it doesn't do the trick.
See this screenshot : http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/7476 ... hotrvm.png

It looks like bash is not started at all for some reason.

Roelof

Rexilion · Post by **Rexilion** » Mon May 17, 2010 8:33 am

Ah ok, and it works with xterm :/

Can you open the gnome terminal preference menu, there should be an option where you can chose your initial command to execute.

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Mon May 17, 2010 8:45 am

Hello,

Xterm does not start at all.
I found the preference menu but it doesn't matter if a use gnome-terminal or /bin/bash as initial command.
The error stays.

Roelof

Rexilion · Post by **Rexilion** » Mon May 17, 2010 8:54 am

Press

CTRL+ALT+F1

, login as a normal user and see if you can get yourself a shell.

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Mon May 17, 2010 12:09 pm

Hello,

When I log in I get /bin/bash as shell.

Roelof

Rexilion · Post by **Rexilion** » Mon May 17, 2010 12:13 pm

Press:

CTRL+ALT+F1

Log in as your regular user.

Make sure you have one X-session running as that same user.

Now, in the TTY (after CTRL+ALT+F1), please enter:

Code: Select all

DISPLAY=:0.0 gnome-terminal

and

Code: Select all

DISPLAY=:0.0 xterm

Can you post both of it's output please?

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Mon May 17, 2010 12:24 pm

Hello,

Display=:0.0 gnome-terminal gives no output.

Display=:0.0 xterm gives this output :

xterm: Error32, errorno 2: No such file or directory.
Reason : get_pty : no enough ptys.

Roelof

Rexilion · Post by **Rexilion** » Mon May 17, 2010 12:59 pm

Can you post the output of the following command please?

Code: Select all

mount

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Mon May 17, 2010 1:59 pm

Hello,

Of course,
Here's the output of mount as a regular user.

Code: Select all


rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
/dev/root on / type ext2 (rw,noatime,errors=continue)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
rc-svcdir on /lib64/rc/init.d type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=1024k,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,gid=5,mode=620)
shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,devmode=0664,devgid=85)
nfsd on /proc/fs/nfsd type nfsd (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)

Roelof

Rexilion · Post by **Rexilion** » Mon May 17, 2010 2:26 pm

Are you using udev?

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Mon May 17, 2010 2:47 pm

Yep.,

Xorg 1.8 uses udev.

Roelof

rynalous · Post by **rynalous** » Mon May 17, 2010 3:52 pm

roelof wrote: Display=:0.0 xterm gives this output :

xterm: Error32, errorno 2: No such file or directory.
Reason : get_pty : no enough ptys.

Roelof

Maybe this?

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Mon May 17, 2010 5:01 pm

Nope,

My fstab looks like this :

Code: Select all

#
# The root filesystem should have a pass number of either 0 or 1.
# All other filesystems should have a pass number of 0 or greater than 1.
#
# See the manpage fstab(5) for more information.
#

# <fs>			<mountpoint>	<type>		<opts>		<dump/pass>

# NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.
/dev/sdb1		/		ext3		noatime		0 1
/dev/cdrom		/mnt/cdrom	auto		noauto,ro	0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts        devpts          gid=5,mode=620  0 0 
#/dev/fd0		/mnt/floppy	auto		noauto		0 0


# glibc 2.2 and above expects tmpfs to be mounted at /dev/shm for 
# POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).
# (tmpfs is a dynamically expandable/shrinkable ramdisk, and will
#  use almost no memory if not populated with files)
shm			/dev/shm	tmpfs		nodev,nosuid,noexec	0 0

So devpts is mounted and as root I can use the terminal.

Roelof

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Tue May 18, 2010 10:54 am

Hello,

Anyone who can help ?

Roelof

pizzach · Post by **pizzach** » Tue May 18, 2010 11:34 am

If the terminal works as root, why didn't you try creating a fresh user to see if the gnome-terminal works for them?

roelof · Post by **roelof** » Tue May 18, 2010 2:00 pm

Hoi,

Problem solved.
It was a misconfiguration of udev in baselayout.

Roelof

Ralgo · Post by **Ralgo** » Tue May 25, 2010 12:51 am

roelof wrote:Hoi,

Problem solved.
It was a misconfiguration of udev in baselayout.

Roelof

I have the same problem today (Gnome 2.28 ).

What's the solution roelof?