In article <Pine.NEB.4.61.0412181036570.1263@x9.ybpnyarg>,
 <wa1ter@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>Due to a disk crash I had to reinstall -current from scratch.  There is
>just one lingering problem with permissions before I'm back to normal.
>
>When I use startx as an ordinary user most everything works except
>xterm and gnome-terminal.
>
>The problem with xterm is this:
>   595 xterm    NAMI  "/dev/ptyp0"
>   595 xterm    RET   open 5
>   595 xterm    CALL  getuid
>   595 xterm    RET   getuid 1000/0x3e8, 1000/0x3e8
>   595 xterm    CALL  chown(0x482e1490,0x3e8,4)
>   595 xterm    NAMI  "/dev/ttyp0"
>   595 xterm    RET   chown -1 errno 1 Operation not permitted
>
>xterm tries to chown ttyp0 to my UID (1000) and fails.  If I make
>xterm SUID (like FreeBSD) then it works.  But xterm wasn't SUID
>before the disk crash and I don't think it should be necessary.
>

Do you have /dev/ptm{,x}?

christos