Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!hafro!krafla!raunvis!kjartan From: kjartan@raunvis.UUCP (Kjartan Pierre Emilsson Jardedlisfraedi) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: failed to bring up xterm. Summary: file ownership ?? Keywords: xterm Message-ID: <227@raunvis.UUCP> Date: 21 Jun 88 11:43:24 GMT References: <23222@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> Organization: Science Inst. Univ. of Iceland Lines: 35 awang@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Alice Wang), writes: >I've been having problem to run xterm lately which used to work properly. >The error message I got is "xterm: Not enough available pty's". >Does anyone out there who might know what went wrong ? I've run into this problem to, and the reason (?) was that somehow all the pty files in /dev inherited the ID ( and ownership ) of the last user who opened them. That is, if the previous user had opened for example 10 windows, there were 10 pty files which had his ID, and which I therefore couldn't open. I fixed it then by opening lots of old xterms ( I was trying to run the new one ), which changed all the pty's ownership to my ID. Either this is a bug in the new xterm or it must be initially set up by super-user ( I was running xterm from my home bin directory ). Strangely enough this hasn't happened again, so I haven't investigated this more closely, but this might be it. -Kjartan- P.S: Thanks to everybody for the answers regarding color table issues. They shed some light on the darker corners of the Xlib manual I have ( the very first and most primitive that exists I believe). ........................................................................... "If you don't like what your left hemisphere thinks, shoot if off." Kjartan Pierre Emilsson, Iceland. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~