From: utzoo!decvax!cca!cak@Purdue@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Title: Re: /dev screwed up Article-I.D.: sri-unix.2778 Posted: Wed Aug 18 22:46:29 1982 Received: Fri Aug 20 02:33:54 1982 From: Chris KentDate: 8 Aug 1982 16:14:44-EST We saw this many times -- what we found (under 4.1bsd) was that a letter got scribbled into /dev. It's from biff -- courtesy of the bugs in the multiplexor. We fudged around the problem by moving /dev/mail to /tmp/mail; it's much less traumatic to lose /tmp. I have heard a rumour that Rob Pike (or someone associated with the Blit terminal) has fixed the bugs in the 4.1 multiplexor, but can't release it. That's really too bad -- even though it's going away with 4.2, it causes a lot of problems for a lot of people right now. chris