no controlling tty

[John P Speno]

> then comparing the permissions on /dev/tty between the this system, and
> another where I am not having the problem I see that /dev/tty wants to be
> world writeable.
> 
> I don't know if this is the best case, but it seems most my boxes have

It's the correct case. /dev/tty is special. It refers to your controlling
terminal. If it's not world writable I wouldn't be surprised if you saw
other problems.

On Tru64 UNIX, see man 7 tty for details. Linux? Try man 4 tty.