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 Kent 
Date: 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