Bug#862857: vim: LOG_ALERT unable to open gpm console, check your /dev filesystem!

James McCoy jamessan at debian.org
Thu May 18 01:33:07 UTC 2017


Control: reassign -1 gpm 1.20.4-6.2
Control: merge 775443 -1

On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 05:12:55PM +0000, Alan Jenkins wrote:
> This happens when running `vi` inside a systemd-nspawn container.
> `vi` is able to run, but each time it logs three lines in
> attention-getting RED (loglevel alert) in the system log.
> 
> 
> strace shows that vi looks for /dev/vc/0 and /dev/tty0.
> Neither of these exist in /dev, this is expected in a container.
> 
> This is triggered by some debian-enabled configuration.

Actually, it's triggered by the lack of a user configuration, so Vim
loads defaults.vim, which does "set mouse=a".  Since you're in a
console, that's handled by gpm.

> That said, I think it's a bug in the code:
> I don't understand why vi thinks it's a good idea to try and
> open some specific physical device, when vi might be running
> inside a multiplexer like screen or tmux which implements a
> windowing system.
> 
> 
> The log messages are:
> 
> May 17 16:55:36 unstable vim[761]: unable to open gpm console, check your /dev filesystem!
> May 17 16:55:36 unstable vim[761]: *** err
> May 17 16:55:36 unstable vim[761]: Oh, oh, it's an error! possibly I die!

Which are all emitted by gpm[0].  It looks like this has already been
reported[1] against gpm ... over 2 years ago.

[0]: https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=Oh%2C+oh%2C+it%27s+an+error
[1]: https://bugs.debian.org/775443

Cheers,
-- 
James
GPG Key: 4096R/91BF BF4D 6956 BD5D F7B7  2D23 DFE6 91AE 331B A3DB



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