Xref: utzoo comp.unix.questions:9288 comp.bugs.4bsd:1001 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.bugs.4bsd Subject: Re: more unix jokes - /dev/null Summary: It can be essential to keep a backup copy of /dev/null Keywords: backup copy of /dev/null Message-ID: <4020@bsu-cs.UUCP> Date: 20 Sep 88 03:13:13 GMT References: <8488@smoke.ARPA> <26090@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1049@sybase.sybase.com> <1414@star.cs.vu.nl> <605@sering.cwi.nl> Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana Lines: 17 ># command > /dev/null ># >#But what would you do if you happened to have no such device? :-) My Microport System V/AT once lost /dev/null. I began seeing strange diagnostics from some programs and it took me while to figure out what was happening. A thorough check in the manual revealed no information about the major/minor device number for /dev/null so I couldn't use mknod to re-create it. I finally restored /dev/null from a backup disk. Now how's that for an ironical situation? I had never before realized how important it is to keep a safe backup copy of /dev/null. -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP:!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi