Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!brtph3!brchh104!brchs1!bnr.ca!rice.edu!sun-spots-request
From: girish@heawk1.gsfc.nasa.gov (Girish )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Funny thing noticed with 4.1 and /dev/null
Keywords: Miscellaneous
Message-ID: <862@brchh104.bnr.ca>
Date: 13 Dec 90 16:37:38 GMT
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Organization: Sun-Spots
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Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 406, message 9
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I just noticed something funny with the /dev/null under SunOS 4.1

mymachine% cat > /dev/null
/dev/null File exists

I said Hum...

mymachineRunning4.0.3% cat > /dev/null

Type happily in the 'black hole' of Unix!!!  Cntl-D gets you out.  Has
something changed in SunOS 4.1 ??

Anybody care to comment ??

Girish Kumthekar
girish@rosserv.gsfc.nasa.gov

[[Ed's Note: This works fine on my machine running 4.1. I'd check the file
/dev/null and make sure everything looks okay on it. It should be c,3,2.
Note: I munged around the permissions, but couldn't duplicate your error.
Also, /dev/null is not name specific, it's the device numbers that SunOS
is looking for. If you do a mknod /dev/blackhole c 3 2, you can cat >
/dev/blackhole just like it was /dev/null. -bdg]]