can't access tty; job control turned off
 

Ok I've just finished a gentoo install and it appears that the bootloader and kernel are working ie. im booting and there arent any kernel error messages, the problem is this - after the boot up ticks along nicely i run into this error message

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off

1st - what does this mean? - ive looked around and i think it means that the terminal isnt working.
2nd - what would cause it?
3rd - how do i fix it?

after the error message i get a built in shell called ash and it has a few commands - like kill, cp, cd, ls etc. but nothing usefull and i can't access any of the programs that i know are on there - what can i do?

Thanks in advance,

tom

1. Yes, that's pretty much it. ;)
2. On several newer systems, using the "Enhanced PCI access mode" setting in your computer's BIOS (or something to the same effect) will cause this. I have no idea why, but disabling it is a good start. Also, a misconfigured 2.6 series kernel will also generate similar errors. You will want the options
CONFIG_UNIX98_PTYS=y, CONFIG_UNIX98_PTY_COUNT=256 and CONFIG_DEVPTS_FS=y when configuring your kernel to have proper virtual (and actual) console access.
3. goto 2 :)


Håkan

thanks man - the thing is im not using 2.6 but 2.4.22 however i will try that enhanced pci access mode :)

ok i couldnt find the "enhanced pci access mode" so thats a no-go any other ideas?

well i gave up in the end and just did a reinstall which worked, there mustve been something that id mucked up :)