On Thu, Aug 31, 2000 at 11:12:00PM -0700, Jeremiah Hunter Savage wrote:
> Thanks for the reply,
>
> I actually _had_ replaced my /dev/null and my system was not too happy -
> procmail kept reporting errors on all my terminals. Also I couldn't send
> email to myself on my local account. I guess exim or procmail depend on
> /dev/null for mail delivery. Seems strange.
>
> But thank you for the explanation for /dev/null My previous concept
> was that it was basically a trash can, so why not just move stuff to it.
> Of course it wouldn't let my do that from my user account, so I su'ed
> and did it...
>
> And the pipe idea is much clearer now. I've been reading some Howto's on
> email so I can automate getting mail from my pop account to my computer,
> so the fetchmail suggestion should come in handy.
cool. i wasn't sure if i was rehashing stuff everybody had already
seen, but i figured SOMEONE out there might get some use out of it.
glad it helped!
> So, luckily Alexey Vyskubov (I'm not going to try pronouncing that :)
> knew what to do:
musta been having a sale on consonants that day... !
> rm -f /dev/null (get rid of the file I had put there)
> mknod /dev/null c 1 3 (some unix magic: char device, major #, minor #)
> chmod a+w /dev/null (permissions)
i was betting it'd be simple; but knowing which incantation to
invoke, there's the rub. i wonder if we ask Vyskubov where the
docs are that describe it, would he be able to tell us? or does
he just KNOW this after years of osmosis?
> So I think my system functions okay now.
> BTW, I replied to myself with a "cure" that didn't work, as it was
> specific to AIX machines. Alexey's suggestion seems to be the right
> thing.
# ls -l /dev/null
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 May 9 21:30 /dev/null
# ls -l ~/.fetchmailrc
-rw------- 1 will serensof 204 Aug 25 00:32 /home/will/.fetchmailrc
aha! on normal files, "ls -l" shows the size (204 bytes, for .fetchmailrc)
where on character devices is shows the major/minor device numbers
(1, 3 for null).
the moral of the story is, i suppose, that if you can't do it as
a normal user, FIND SOME ANSWERS before trying to clobber something
as root! places to look include
- man <cmd>
- info <cmd>
- /usr/share/doc/* (debian)
- /usr/doc/*
- locate <partial/file/path>
- apropos <keywords>
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