[SC.LUG] /dev dilemma

[Simeon Farrington]

Dear all

Right, well that didn't go to plan. I wonder if anyone else has 
experienced this and more importantly solved it.

Just dist-upgraded to the latest debian unstable and  there seems to be a 
problem with permissions that I've not quite sorted. Basically it appears 
to be the way the system is dealing with the /dev "directory". I had a few 
issues getting the upgrade to work due to issues with the udev package and 
I wonder if it's all tied in to that. It was relying on the kernel being 
about 2.6.12 (which it now is).

Basically I can get into console mode no problem (that's where I am now). 
If I try to go into X as a normal user it complains about access to PTYs 
and crashes out having been denied access to /dev/null. Going in under 
root allows me to get KDE up and running although it complains that 
/dev/dsp is no longer there and hence can't be accessed and therefore it 
will output sound to the null device. I think this is what the normal user 
is seeing upon crash-out with the /dev/null error.

Anyone got any clues as to what is going on here and more importantly if 
you know how to fix it! Certainly running apt-get in various guises 
doesn't suggest any vitally missing packages so that's not any help :(

Thanks

Simeon