When upgrading from (k)ubuntu Hardy to (k)ubuntu Jaunty, it looked to be seamless. Until I launched konsole, yakuake, or xterm. The former two just returned a cursor sans prompt, the latter just wouldn’t launch. I stumbled on the solution thusly:
- Get a console login with Ctrl-Alt-F1
- login
- run `apt-get command`
-
- It doesn’t matter what command, we’re just looking for something that doesn’t return with no action; you just want an error. ‘autoremove’ worked for me)
- I got this error: Can not write log, openpty() failed (/dev/pts not mounted?)
and indeed, /dev/pts wasn’t mounted. Mounting /dev/pts manually with `sudo mount -t devpts devpts /dev/pts` gives me a usable konsole. I’d installed virtualbox and modified /etc/init/mountdevusbfs some time ago. According to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/360160, the workaround is no longert needed, so the custom script can be replaced with the dpkg one and all will be well with your terminals. This still didn’t solve the problem for me. So, I’ve added a line to /etc/fstab:
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
which works wonderfully.
Sources:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/360160
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/313947