Confession/explanation:
I was in a huge hurry. I did not have the five minutes that my user
asked me for and I did not investigate his problem thoroughly before
asking the question. I acted without thinking. (Sigh.)
Now I have the time to think. The other 'very urgent' problem is solved
and I can breath.
See my explanations below. (If interested.)
Johannes Eriksson wrote:
<snip>
> /dev/nul on a redhat system? Which package does it belong to? Did
> you symlink it to /dev/null or mknod it yourself?
Of course not. I should have realized this myself. Actually, in a moment
of strong stress *I* created it by redirecting some stuff to /dev/nul as
root, just to show that it worked. RH nicely created the *file*
/dev/nul, which I have now rm'ed. (Sigh.)
And no, it wasn't a break in. I'm behind a very solid (though not
unbreakable) firewall. I'm on top of the RH erratas. I read my logs.
ipchains, portsentry, logcheck. DMZ.
I just need to protect my systems from myself. :-) I'm running twelve
PCs in two home networks for me and my family. I try to do this during
evenings, and *still* be able to spend time with my kids. And my bike.
And my wife. (In no particular order. ;-)
<snip>
> > If the same user tries to:
> >
> > any_command | /dev/null
> > ^^^^
> > it works fine.
>
> I doubt it. That command would results in a broken pipe unless
> /dev/null is an executable program.
You're right. Again. (Sigh)
> > I'm surpriced. Why is /dev/nul reserved for root? What could a user harm
> > by sending stuff to /dev/nul ? And what's the difference between
> > /dev/nul and /dev/null ?
>
> First, teach your users proper redirection:
>
> some_command < /dev/null (for redirecting standard input)
> some_command > /dev/null (for redirecting standard output)
That, and teach *me* not to just accept any statements from my users
(i.e. family members) without thinking.
> Then, if you really need a /dev/nul file, create it (as root):
> # mknod /dev/nul c 1 3
> # chmod 666 /dev/nul
>
> That would allow users to use either /dev/nul or /dev/null, but why?
Yes, why? (No answer to that one. ;-)
Sorry to spend your time and bandwidth with this crap. Thanks anyhow to
all of you that answered.
Best regards
Gustav
--
pgp = Pretty Good Privacy.
To get my public pgp key, send an e-mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Visit my web site at http://www.schaffter.com
_______________________________________________
Redhat-list mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
