Re: [Sheflug] pts/x (fwd)

[Alex Hudson <nospam [at] alexhudson.com>]

On 03 Mar 2001 22:57:11 +0000, Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote:
> 1) kernel 2.2.18 1 user (apart from root), login via terminal, rlogin,
> ssh, X (like rlogin x, xterm)
> right now who reports me on pts/1,3,4,5,6; ls /dev/pts gives the same -
> 1,3,4,5,6
> 
> 2) kernel 2.4.2 users can rlogin, ssh, X into the host, same - who's
> report agrees with ls /dev/pts.

Check the X start-up log, and see if GNOME (or whatever you run) has
grabbed a pts, although it ought to show up.. might be worth grepping
through all your logs, X, /var/log/messages, etc., for any mention of
the device.

> >     * are people able to login through a masq'ing server or some other
> >     NATing router?
> 
> Not sure what this means, sorry, only can tell that I can ssh to it from
> outside the firewall, which IS a masq'ing server, I assume.

By masq'ing I'm talking about a specific form of NAT - source nat, a
many-to-one relationship where machines behind a firewall connect to
machines outside the network via the firewall and appear as the
firewall. What can happen is that if you leave a ssh session, or
similar, connected because they're quiet protocols no data gets passed
unless you use it. The masq'ing gateway maintains a table of
connections, but these time out after a while, so if the connection gets
timed out that means the ssh session loses communication one way.
However, the sockets at either end will remain open, so you've lost a
tty, at least until the ssh session times out (usually via keepalive).

> What does this mean?

Dunno :) As Will said, the tty code looks fairly safe, as does the
/fs/devpts system, so can't believe it's a bug in any shape or form. And
there aren't any special cases in there which would account for it.
Either it's in use, or for some reason it can't be used - try checking
the logs, see if there are any references to it..

Cheers,

Alex.
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