I'm running Slackware (-current). Gnome 2.4.0.

Over the past six days of uptime I have noticed two peculiar things.

1) I have "stale" gnome-terminals showing in the "who" list. That is, at some point I was in Gnome and using a gnome-terminal...but when I "exit"ed ... the terminal still shows in the who list. Furthermore, the PIDs associated with these terminals do not even exist in the /proc filesystem or in ps -A. How the heck do I remove these things without restarting the machine? (NOTE: the two "stale" terminals are pts/4 and pts/171 in the output below)

2) Regarding these gnome-terminals...notice the pts/# in the below results? I assure you I have not opened 170+ gnome terminals since I rebooted this machine six days ago. Sometimes I'll open a gnome-terminal and the pts/# will be like 40 higher than the last time I opened a terminal. Is this a sign of being hacked? It doesn't make sense to me as I thought all the pts/#'s were supposed to increment by one each time a new virtual terminal is opened.

---------------------some commands/output below:

bash-2.05b# who -u
bob tty1 Mar 27 06:34 01:32 4479
bob tty2 Mar 25 18:06 old 1166
bob pts/4 Mar 26 18:06 ? 3549 (:0.0)
bob pts/171 Mar 30 18:34 ? 22868 (:0.0)
bob pts/174 Mar 31 18:47 . 24711 (:0.0)

bash-2.05b# kill 3549
bash: kill: (3549) - No such process

bash-2.05b# kill 22868
bash: kill: (22868) - No such process

bash-2.05b# ls /proc
1 1228 24502 24564 24619 586 dma loadavg swaps
10 1285 24509 24565 24711 590 dri locks sys
1073 13 24511 24566 24712 6 driver meminfo sysvipc
11 17320 24513 24567 24713 619 execdomains misc tty
1166 17347 24522 24568 25105 72 filesystems mki-adapter uptime
1167 2 24534 24571 25121 9 fs modules version
1168 23597 24550 24572 25257 apm ide mounts vmstat
1169 23598 24552 24575 3 asound interrupts mtrr
1170 23599 24554 24583 4 buddyinfo iomem net
1191 23600 24556 24590 4479 bus ioports partitions
12 24483 24557 24593 5 cmdline irq scsi
1207 24495 24558 24594 572 cpuinfo kallsyms self
1208 24496 24560 24595 575 devices kcore slabinfo
1209 24500 24562 24599 584 diskstats kmsg stat

bash-2.05b# ps -AH
PID TTY TIME CMD
1 ? 00:00:04 init
2 ? 00:00:00 ksoftirqd/0
3 ? 00:00:01 events/0
4 ? 00:00:03 kblockd/0
10 ? 00:00:00 aio/0
13 ? 00:00:00 reiserfs/0
17347 ? 00:00:00 pdflush
17320 ? 00:00:30 pdflush
5 ? 00:00:00 khubd
6 ? 00:00:00 kapmd
9 ? 00:00:16 kswapd0
11 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_0
12 ? 00:00:00 kseriod
72 ? 00:00:00 dhcpcd
572 ? 00:00:00 syslogd
575 ? 00:00:00 klogd
584 ? 00:00:00 crond
586 ? 00:00:00 atd
590 ? 00:00:00 apmd
619 ? 00:00:00 gpm
1073 ? 00:00:00 vnetd
1166 tty2 00:00:00 bash
1191 tty2 00:00:07 FAH4Console-Lin
23598 tty2 23:23:59 FahCore_65.exe
1167 tty3 00:00:00 agetty
1168 tty4 00:00:00 agetty
1169 tty5 00:00:00 agetty
1170 tty6 00:00:00 agetty
1228 ? 00:00:00 bonobo-activati
1285 ? 00:00:00 evolution-womba
4479 tty1 00:00:00 bash
24483 tty1 00:00:00 startx
24495 tty1 00:00:00 xinit
24496 ? 00:02:39 X
24500 tty1 00:00:00 gnome-session
24502 tty1 00:00:02 gconfd-2
24509 ? 00:00:00 esd
24511 ? 00:00:00 gnome-smproxy
24513 ? 00:00:00 gnome-settings-
24522 ? 00:00:00 xscreensaver
24534 ? 00:00:02 metacity
24550 ? 00:00:03 gnome-panel
24552 ? 00:00:02 nautilus
24554 ? 00:00:03 wnck-applet
24556 ? 00:00:00 mixer_applet2
24560 ? 00:00:00 mapping-daemon
24562 ? 00:00:08 evolution-1.4
24564 ? 00:00:00 evolution-alarm
24583 ? 00:00:00 run-mozilla.sh
24590 ? 00:04:10 mozilla-bin
24599 ? 00:00:00 netstat <defunct>
24711 ? 00:00:05 gnome-terminal
24712 ? 00:00:00 gnome-pty-helpe
24713 pts/174 00:00:00 bash
25121 pts/174 00:00:00 bash
25258 pts/174 00:00:00 ps
25105 ? 00:00:07 gaim

I don't really have an answer to why your gnome-terminals would be lingering around but I will tell you this, last time I used gnome-terminal, it would make my machine hang for a few seconds to 15 seconds where I couldn't do anything with the terminal and would do the same when exiting it. I never checked whether or not it left behind a dead process but I've never been a fan of gnome-terminal as its just simply utter crap. Does it do this if you use any other terminal, like xterm or aterm, etc?

I was using Slackware 9.1 at the time and no other app or terminal would hang like gnome-terminal. Since I never really use it though, I never bother troubleshooting.

I'll try the other terminals you mentioned.

Thanks.

I'm having the same problem I believe although I think X is leaving the stale pts around. I don't know how to kill them without rebooting either...

I've been using xterm since this thread and I haven't had any dead terminal processes yet. You may want to give it a try.

if you think its x leaving the stale pts' around then surely restarting x should solve it that way you won't need a machine reboot

Nope killing X is what caused the extra pts in the first place.. restarting added more. I'm using aterm right now ATM.. The thing that keeps me using gnome-terminal is the antialiased fonts, which the other terms don't do and also the transparency on the gnome-terminals is cool. See my screenshots to see what I'm talking about. I can tint it a cool shade of white...

i'm fairly sure that konsole will let you do the same from what I remember

I hate KDE though that's the problem. I'm running a pure GTK+ system and don't have KDE libs installed nor do I plan on it. KDE = the devil .

gotta admit I'm not a fan of KDE either but I have it installed on my system despite the fact I don't use it (other than KPPP, what's the alternative btw? ). I find it hard to believe gnome-terminal is the only x-terminal that supports anti-aliased fonts but after a quick google I can't seem to find any

Most people believe terminals shouldn't be pretty and argue AA fonts look bad and stuff... stupid people...

To get rid of the entries in the who list just delete it - it's located in /var/run/utmp. Of course, this deletes *all* entries in the who list, so doing who afterwards will display just nothing.
You must recreate an empty /var/run/utmp file (touch /var/run/utmp; chown root.tty /var/run/utmp) or all future logins won't appear in the who list either.