Bug 140952

Can you try running konsole from the command-line like this:

konsole -e $SHELL

And let me know what output you get.

By command-line I assume you mean Alt-F2.

Running konsole -e $SHELL gives the same result as when I click on the konsole icon:  The konsole opens and the error pop-up follows immediately with the same message as before.

If I try the command from Ctl-Alt-F1 it returns the message: konsole:  cannot connect to X server

> By command-line I assume you mean Alt-F2. 

Ah, not quite.
 
Start the 'xterm' program, by pressing Alt+F2 and running "xterm".  Then type in 'konsole' and press return.

Konsole should print a number of debugging messages in the xterm window.  Could you select them and paste them here?

Oops.

Ok, I pressed Alt-F2, typed in xterm and hit enter.  Nothing happened.  No xterm opened.  Is there a log that I can check for the debugging messages?

Okay, another option is to start Konsole from the text terminal, and then switch to the display.

1.  Type Ctrl+Alt+F1 to switch to the text terminal and log in
2.  Run 'DISPLAY=:0 konsole'

This should avoid the "Cannot connect to X server" message.  The Konsole window will appear on the main display (Ctrl+Alt+F7 to switch to it)

3.  Let me know what output you get.  You can cat it to a file like so:

DISPLAY=:0 konsole 2> log_file

Perhaps this is a useful data point (perhaps not :-):

You can get the same error and behaviour by running, eg;
konsole -e 'ls ..'
It should of course be:
konsole -e ls ..

But perhaps knowing this is useful

#5 Did as you suggested.  When switching back to Ctl-Alt-F7, the konsole window appears as before, the error message pops up and when I click the OK button on the error message, the konsole window disappears.

The file to which I (try to) cat the output is empty.

On Ctl-Alt-F1, the following appears:
kdecore (Kprocess):  Warning Can't open a pseudo teletype!
konsole: WARNING: Unable to open a pseudo teletype
Uh oh.. Can't get terminal attributes

#6  I tried to run konsole -e ls .. from Alt-F2 but nothing visible happened.

When I try it from Ctl-Alt-F1, the same thing as described for #5 above happens.

Hello Ace,

Can you try to find out whether any other Debian users running the same KDE 3.5.5 packages also experience the same problem?

Sure, I'll post a message on the Debian forum and let you know.

On 3 Feb 2007 03:22:19 -0000, Robert Knight <robertknight@gmail.com> wrote:
[bugs.kde.org quoted mail]
Sure, I&#39;ll post a message on the Debian forum and let you know.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 3 Feb 2007 03:22:19 -0000, <b class="gmail_sendername">Robert Knight</b> &lt;<a href="mailto:robertknight@gmail.com">
robertknight@gmail.com</a>&gt; wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
<br>You reported the bug, or are watching the reporter.<br><br><a href="http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=140952">http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=140952</a><br><br><br><br><br>------- Additional Comments From robertknight gmail com&nbsp;&nbsp;2007-02-03 04:22 -------
<br>Hello Ace,<br><br>Can you try to find out whether any other Debian users running the same KDE 3.5.5 packages also experience the same problem?<br></blockquote></div><br>

I've posted the error on the Debian Forum and the only reply received was from someone who has not experienced the problem and said "Kanotix != Debian, especially in this case, because the problem might be related to wrong permissions on pty device nodes (probably Kanotix specific)."

My posts on the Kanotix forum has not elicited any response either.  

Searching on Google has similarly not been helpful, except to show that this problem is (a) quite rare and (b) not limited to Debian.

Are you able to run xterm, rxvt or gnome-terminal?  Unfortunately the PTY error message is shown by Konsole for a variety of unrelated problems as well.

But if it is a PTY error, that can be debugged using the strace tool, which can be installed using "apt-get install strace" under debian.

If you are able to run xterm, then start it using Alt+F2 and run these commands from there:

strace -e trace=stat64 konsole 2> log
cat log | grep pts

I cannot run xterm.  When I go Alt+F2 - xterm - enter, a konsole opens and the same PTY error message pops up.  

Is it possible to do the strace from Ctl-Alt-F1?

I ran strace from Alt-F2 and it produced an output file of over 500K.  There were a number of PTY related messages, but they were all identical, as follows:

open("/dev/ptyp0", O_RDWR)              = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/ptyp1", O_RDWR)              = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
.
.
.
open("/dev/ptyoy", O_RDWR)              = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/ptyoz", O_RDWR)              = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

Are there other messages that I should look for or should I post the whole strace output file?

Sorry, misinterpreted your earlier message (#11).  I reran strace as follows:  strace -e trace=stat64 konsole 2> /home/e-dua/msg1.txt  

It rpoduced an output file of 82K.  

There was one reference to pts (I include the two lines before and after):

stat64("/home/e-dua/.compose-cache/", 0xbf9e3b50) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64(".", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0775, st_size=7712, ...}) = 0
stat64("/dev/pts/0", 0xbf9e3b64)        = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/home/e-dua/.kde/share/config/", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=5368, ...}) = 0
stat64("/home/e-dua/.kde/share/config/kdebugrc", 0x8158af8) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

Hope that helps.

Seems to be solved.

I added a line to my fstab:

devpts   /dev/pts  devpts   gid=5,mode=620   0  0

and that did the trick.

Marking it as resolved.

I ran into this identical problem after upgrading from 2.6.18 to 2.6.21-686 using knoppix and debian package sources.

The error message is not good enough to help me resolve this issue. It indicates that there is a "konsole configuration problem" when actually, it is not related to Konsole at all, but more a general pty problem. I'm unable to start any X like terminals. When i try to start xterm, it says: "not enough ptys". 


Adding the line as shown in /etc/fstab did not fix my problem either.

I realize this is not exactly a Konsole bug, but does someone else have a suggestion as to what I should try next?

oops. ignore previous message. after making the change to /etc/fstab, I had to reboot too.