help -- my system might be hosed!!

shrndegruv · l33t Joined: 18 Sep 2005 Posts: 658

The last thing I did was unmerge vmware 5 and emerge 5.5 -- ran the setup script. It was erroring out at building the kernel modules -- I was rmmoding the vmnet module, and couldnt, because it was in use. I tried restarting, and now I cannot open any terminals.

This is hand-copied

Eterm: Warning: Config file is designed for a newer version of Eterm
Eterm: Error: Can't open pseudo-tty -- No such file or directory

in my /var/log/messages I see

rc-scripts Error: Problem starting needed services. netmount was not started.

help!

thewally · l33t Joined: 12 May 2005 Posts: 703 Location: Genova

I don't understand: you can login at boot (on tty1, for example), but you can't open any virtual console (like xter, aterm, eterm, konsole, gnome-terminal & Co.), right?
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shrndegruv · l33t Joined: 18 Sep 2005 Posts: 658

correct. I dont know if it is related to vmware emerge. I also cannot start networking. I remember when I emerged vmware 5.0, it said something about needing to update config files in portage(does that sound right?), but I forgot to do it before unmerging and then reemerging version 5.5.

shrndegruv · l33t Joined: 18 Sep 2005 Posts: 658

noone has ever seen this before?

shrndegruv · l33t Joined: 18 Sep 2005 Posts: 658

recompiling the kernel does not help

I did genkernel --menuconfig all (didnt know if genkernel starts new every time or keeps current configuration; wanted to preserve my sound)

thewally · l33t Joined: 12 May 2005 Posts: 703 Location: Genova

Seems like you have lost some device in /dev/.
Post your

shrndegruv · l33t Joined: 18 Sep 2005 Posts: 658

I would like to, but I cant get networking started, so I cannot easily post that long list. Can you indicate what to look for?

thewally · l33t Joined: 12 May 2005 Posts: 703 Location: Genova

shrndegruv · l33t Joined: 18 Sep 2005 Posts: 658

I am home from work and can see the system now...

most have crw-rw---- as their permission and root tty as user group. Some have root root as user group, and some have permission of crw-------

tty1 has my username and tty as user group. Those have permission of crw-------

In sum -- they do not all have the permissions you specified, not the user group of root root -- is that a problem, and what is the fix?

Perhaps the more important question: how did this happen? After installing I did everything as my normal user, using sudo to run emerges. I have not dabbled explicitly (at least knowingly) in the dev directly at all.

shrndegruv · l33t Joined: 18 Sep 2005 Posts: 658

i need to bump this -- still not resolved, and I dont want to have to reinstall

Etherealflaim · n00b Joined: 22 Dec 2005 Posts: 38

Not being an avid user of Eterm, I can't help you specifically, but here is what I would do.

Find out where eterm saves configuration files (man page might help), delete them, and re-merge eterm. From what I can see, there is no way to tell if it is Eterm messing up with a lack of configuration or if your pseudo-ttys are messed up. This should at least eliminate the first possibility.

Second, make sure you are using udev and a new (2.6.13+) kernel. I don't know enough about udev, but you might need to set udev to not save device files at shutdown (this forces it to populate dev explicitly every time on boot).

Try these out and do a little more googling for any errors you get and let us know.

~Eko