dev pts mystery

[songbird <songbird@anthive.com>]

  ok, here's one i can't figure out:

  looking at /dev/pts


  when i open a gnome terminal and open several more 
tabs it usually looks like:

crw--w---- 1 me   tty  136, 0 Sep  3 20:05 0
crw--w---- 1 me   tty  136, 1 Sep  3 20:04 1
crw--w---- 1 me   tty  136, 2 Sep  3 20:04 2
crw--w---- 1 me   tty  136, 3 Sep  3 20:05 3
crw--w---- 1 me   tty  136, 4 Sep  3 20:05 4


  somehow (i can't say what happened or i'd
have the answer), now it looks like:

crw--w---- 1 me   tty  136, 0 Sep  3 20:05 0
crw--w---- 1 me   tty  136, 1 Sep  3 20:10 1
crw--w---- 1 root tty  136, 2 Sep  4  2012 2
crw--w---- 1 me   tty  136, 3 Sep  3 20:05 3
crw--w---- 1 me   tty  136, 4 Sep  3 20:05 4
c--------- 1 root root   5, 2 Sep  3 14:53 ptmx

  and when i open tabs i never get a tty
of /dev/pts/2 when i use the tty command,
it skips from 1 to 3.

  it's like it's hung up or reserved somehow.
i have rebooted, reinstalled the kernel and
downgraded and reupgradeds that also downgraded 
udev and reupgraded udev and this virtual 
device never goes away unless i reboot into 
single user mode.   otherwise it's there even 
though i don't have extra tabs open.

  like:

crw--w---- 1 me   tty  136, 0 Sep  3 20:05 0
crw--w---- 1 root tty  136, 2 Sep  4  2012 2
c--------- 1 root root   5, 2 Sep  3 14:53 ptmx

  i have set up a different user under Gnome and
that didn't make any difference (just in case it
was somehow a Gnome terminal thing).

  i'll admit i don't quite get initramfs setup
and /run or how these things get initialized
and how the different layers of udev (/etc/, /lib/,
/run) work so i'm guessing that somehow a configuration
got set in /etc/ and then was propagated back to
initramfs when i upgraded the kernel so that now
it is "there" and i can't get it out...).

  so are there any ideas on how to remove /dev/pts/2
or reset the whole udev tty virtual device setup?

  i'm reading what i can find for udev and pts
docs, but nothing seems to tell me how to delete
this device or to refresh the udev setup from
scratch to get rid of this dangling pts...


  udev, kernel, version:

ii  libudev0:i386                                     175-7                              i386         libudev shared library
ii  udev                                              175-7                              i386         /dev/ and hotplug management daemon

ii  linux-image-3.5-trunk-686-pae                     3.5.2-1~experimental.1             i386         Linux 3.5 for modern PCs

  thanks for any ideas,  it sure has me puzzled...


  songbird