Ok just compiled Eterm on an LFS 4.0 system running a 2.5.67 kernel with devpts support compiled in and /dev/pts filesystem mounted.

When I go to execute Eterm as a user I get:
'cant open pseudo-tty --no such file or directory'

I haven't touched the /dev filesystem since I followed the install instructions in the LFS books...

also, I can execute Eterm just fine as root... so its definately a permissions problem... just don't know what permissions I have to mod...

thanks in advance for any help.

Check to make sure /dev/ptmx exists and that is set to mode 666

THANK YOU! that was it... while I did have ptmx, it was set to 644... changing it to 666 solved the problem... damned sign of the beast... does wonders some times.

but seriously... thank you very much for your help...

jpbarto

Here's something to remember for next time: use a program called strace

It traces system calls a program makes and it'll tell you all the files it tries to open, read, write and the system calls themselves a program tries to use. It would have told you that it tried to access /dev/ptmx and that it got a permission denied problem. Eterm doesn't give that error (it simply doesn't error check for ptmx apparently) but the error is hidden (thus can be revealed by strace).

Strace is very handy when it comes to debugging these problems. Sometimes seg faults can happen due to missing files but a program won't tell you. Before I whip out my debugger I just strace the program and look at what it was doing just before it crashed. Maybe a file failed to open and bad code made it crash.

strace can be found at http://freshmeat.net

thanks for the tip; I'll check it out.