Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!bacchus.pa.dec.com!shlump.nac.dec.com!decuac!haven!mimsy!mojo!stripes From: stripes@eng.umd.edu (Joshua Osborne) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Reserving Space on Disk Message-ID: <1990Jul17.030540.3697@eng.umd.edu> Date: 17 Jul 90 03:05:40 GMT References: <1990Jul15.211608.26025@virtech.uucp> <13212@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com> Sender: news@eng.umd.edu (The News System) Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity of Uniland, College Park Lines: 16 In article <13212@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com> fnf@riscokid.UUCP (Fred Fish) writes: >This reminds me, I've always wondered why there wasn't a /dev/full as a >standard part of unix. It's the obvious counterpart of /dev/null, and >simply returns as many null bytes as you ask for. Then all you would >have to do is: > > dd if=/dev/full of=myfile bs=1k count=4k SunOS has a /dev/zero, it does exactly what you want. They use it to get zero mapped pages (ld.so mmap()s shared lib's data space from the /dev/zero file). -- stripes@eng.umd.edu "Security for Unix is like Josh_Osborne@Real_World,The Mutitasking for MS-DOS" "The dyslexic porgramer" - Kevin Lockwood "Don't try to change C into some nice, safe, portable programming language with all sharp edges removed, pick another language." - John Limpert