Mental Junk

That is the message that greeted me when I tried to log into my VPS (webserver).

I had no way of accessing my box at the console – so I couldn't do much of anything.  All the posts I could find that solved the issue (or presented solutions, anyway) required you to log into the box.  Uhhh…. this is a VIRTUAL SYSTEM.  There is NO console.  How do you log in to fix it, guys?

Continuing my search, I stumbled upon Yak Shaving's blog regarding the same issue.  The magic command? 

ssh user@host "/bin/bash -i"

Ah!  Pure magic!!  Back into the system as root.  Just the way it should be.

Please check out his entire entry for the full solution. 

 Thanks again Yak.

Edit: tldr;

rm -rf /dev/ptmx
mknod /dev/ptmx c 5 2
chmod 666 /dev/ptmx
umount /dev/pts
rm -rf /dev/pts
mkdir /dev/pts
mount /dev/pts