User gets the error message could not grant slave pty when attempting a telnet(1), rlogin(1), or rsh(1) session (anything that requires a shell) or when trying to bring up an x-term.
The user's file permissions were set wrong on /usr/lib/pt_chmod. The user had:
# ls -la /usr/lib/pt_chmod ---s--x--x 1 bin bin 3120 May 3 1996 |
# ls -la /usr/lib/pt_chmod ---s--x--x 1 root bin 3120 May 3 1996 |
The owner should be root; the user had bin as the owner. Also, the setuid bit must be set.
By using chown root pt_chmod, the problem was corrected.