On Sat, 13 Oct 2007, Marc Ensenbach wrote:-

>Hello,
>
>today I upgraded from 10.1 to 10.3 doing a fresh install but keeping
>/home and /usr/local. Now I'm experiencing problems which seem to be
>caused by a broken /dev/null (e. g. when I'm trying to execute ssh, I
>get the message "Couldn't open /dev/null: Permission denied").
>
>My system says:
>> ls -ld /dev/null*
>-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 39 13. Okt 15:18 /dev/null
>-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4051 13. Okt 15:17 /dev/null.2007-10-13.0
>lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 13. Okt 15:17 /dev/null.current ->
>null.2007-10-13.0
>
>Any ideas what's wrong

Yes. Something has deleted the device /dev/null and replaced it with a
normal file. You can possibly find out what created the file by looking
at the contents, but that won't tell you why it was removed.

>and how to fix it?

That's easy. Delete the file and then recreate the device. Log in on a
console as root and then these two commands should fix it:

rm /dev/null*
mknod --mode=666 /dev/null c 1 3

The mknod will create the device /dev/null, and gives it the normal mode
666, which means anyone can read and write to it.

Purely as an example, and don't try this at home:

lion:~ # rm /dev/null*
lion:~ # ls -l /dev/null*
ls: cannot access /dev/null*: No such file or directory

Oops, no /dev/null.

lion:~ # mknod --mode=666 /dev/null c 1 3
lion:~ # ls -l /dev/null*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 Oct 13 15:28 /dev/null

That's better, all is well with the world^w^w/dev .

lion:~ # mknod /dev/null2 c 1 3
lion:~ # ls -l /dev/null*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 Oct 13 15:28 /dev/null
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 1, 3 Oct 13 15:29 /dev/null2

Oh look, root now has their own /dev/null2. Not much use as, not
normally existing, no-one know it's there and so wouldn't use it.

lion:~ # rm /dev/null2

Well, why not. It's not like it's ever going to be used.


Regards,
David Bolt

--
Member of Team Acorn checking nodes at 100 Mnodes/s: www.distributed.net
SUSE 10.0 32bit | SUSE 10.1 32bit | openSUSE 10.2 32bit | openSUSE 10.3 32bit
SUSE 10.0 64bit | SUSE 10.1 64bit | openSUSE 10.2 64bit |
RISC OS 3.11 | RISC OS 3.6 | TOS 4.02 | openSUSE 10.3 PPC

David Bolt wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Oct 2007, Marc Ensenbach wrote:-
>> My system says:
>>> ls -ld /dev/null*
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 39 13. Okt 15:18 /dev/null
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4051 13. Okt 15:17 /dev/null.2007-10-13.0
>> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 13. Okt 15:17 /dev/null.current ->
>> null.2007-10-13.0
>>
>> Any ideas what's wrong
>
> Yes. Something has deleted the device /dev/null and replaced it with a
> normal file. You can possibly find out what created the file by looking
> at the contents, but that won't tell you why it was removed.

I think I found out. The guilty one is ... KInternet. Before initiating
a modem connection, everthing is fine:

> ls -ld /dev/null*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 21. Sep 21:12 /dev/null

During dialing the system becomes corrupted:

> ls -ld /dev/null*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 188 13. Okt 16:54 /dev/null.2007-10-13.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 13. Okt 16:54 /dev/null.current ->
null.2007-10-13.0

And finally, when the connection is established, it says:

> dir /dev/null*
-rw------- 1 root root 39 13. Okt 16:55 /dev/null
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1651 13. Okt 16:55 /dev/null.2007-10-13.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 13. Okt 16:54 /dev/null.current ->
null.2007-10-13.0

>> and how to fix it?
>
> That's easy. Delete the file and then recreate the device. [...]

Thanks. That helped to temporarily solve the problem. But when I
reconnect, the device is again deleted and replaced by a file. Any ideas
how to stop KInternet from messing up /dev/null?

Greetings,

Marc