Please explain--getty[7857]: /dev/tty6: cannot open as standard input: No such device--from my auth.log

Question

I'm running a ubuntu server 8.10, and have a ton of these lines in my auth.log

Edit:

crw------- 1 root root    4, 0 May 27  2010 /dev/tty1
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 1 May 27  2010 /dev/tty2
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 2 May 27  2010 /dev/tty3
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 3 May 27  2010 /dev/tty4
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 4 May 27  2010 /dev/tty5
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 5 May 27  2010 /dev/tty6

Are those right?

Answer 1

I would do:

ls -l /dev/tty[0-6]

and see if tty6 is missing or has the wrong permissions, owner, group or major/minor device numbers.

Answer 2

"No such device" would indicate that there are only 5 virtual consoles, or fewer if you're also seeing it for other devices. (ENXDEV "No such device or address" indicates that a device node exists, but there's nothing in the kernel for it to connect to.)

The odd thing is that Linux normally allocates virtual consoles as needed. Are there any mssages about vc or ttyS in /var/log/messages?