On a new build of tc and decided to install the gnome disk utility but as in a previous build where I had added the gvfs extension I found my vte-based terminals stopped working.
Terminator responded with 'failed to create pseudo-tty' whilst Sakura's cursors froze and no input was possible. When the terminals were run with sudo they worked fine. When I removed the gnome-disk-utility extension from the onboot list the problem went away.
I am guessing that this disk utility may have security measures that have somehow stopped my terminals working aimed at non-sudo use - from my googling it definitely seems to be a permissions thing perhaps connected with glibc...
At any rate it seems like a possible bug in this package rather than with my setup...