On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 09:46:04AM +0000, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: > Hi, > > Jumping in late, and probably noone still reads this thread, but still, > > On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 01:21:39AM -0300, Rafael Fontenelle wrote: > > > So, I think that the command 'cat /dev/null > /dev/hdd' did nothing to your > > system. Maybe something else? > > /dev/hdd is a block device. 'cat whatever >/dev/hdd' is an operation on > a character device, essentially.
I do not think character or block device matters. Upon reading /dev/null, EOF will be encounterd. So nothing is written to output. For example try: $ cat /dev/null >here $ ls -l here -rw-r--r-- 1 osamu osamu 0 2008-04-27 19:03 here As long as you use correct device, it will write output. /dev/zero or /dev/urandom is the good file to use as such input. $ cat /dev/zero >here (Control C pressed) $ ls -l here -rw-r--r-- 1 osamu osamu 105467904 2008-04-27 19:15 here Instead of here, you use /dev/sdax etc. I will not try it now :-) http://people.debian.org/~osamu/pub/getwiki/html/ch02.en.html#specialdevicefiles I usually use dd to erase this kind of device file. The dummy file creation is the same. http://people.debian.org/~osamu/pub/getwiki/html/ch11.en.html#dummyfiles Osamu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
