Problem with terminals(Linux)

Ok, I have finally bitten the bullet and started using linux again after *BSD systems just did not have the media capabilities that I desired, choosing gentoo as my distro. Installation went totally fine. When I installed and ran Xserver, I noticed a problem: unless I was logged in as root, instead of terminal programs starting with a standard prompt, only a dark rectangle in the upper left corner would appear, and I could not type anything into them. If anyone could give me any suggestions/tips on why this is happening, I would be appreciative.

thanks

EvBlade, I don't know what could be causing that problem, and since no one responded yet, I don't feel as bad for pointing you to www.linuxquestions.org ; I'm sure that community could be more helpful in this instance,

thanks, it was pretty helpful. It had to do with incorrect permissions on the PTYs, easily resolved via a chmod call; however, I just installed udev and that works too.