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kramer65
Asked: 2014-02-22 14:35:03 +0800 CST

Can't run screen due to "cannot open terminal '/dev/pts/1' - please check" error

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To learn some server management I just created a new Ubuntu 12.04 server. Since I only had a root account I created a new user with adduser kramer65. I then switched to that user using su kramer65. I now want to run screen, so I typed screen and hit enter, after which I'm presented with this line:

Cannot open your terminal '/dev/pts/1' - please check.

And here I'm lost. Why doesn't it open screen, and what should I do with the very helpful tip "please check"?

All tips are welcome!

command-line

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Turns out the problem was that I ssh'ed into the machine as root, then changed to the user kramer65 with su kramer65 and then tried to run screen, where screen can only be run by the user that logs in using ssh. So after I added kramer65 to the sudoers file with usermod -aG sudo kramer65 I could ssh into the machine as kramer65 and run screen with a big smile.

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  2. There is a way around this without resorting to adding the user (kramer65 in this example) to the sudoers file. If you run script /dev/null right before attaching a screen session (or creating a new screen session), you should then be able to run your session without that error.

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