Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request From: lamy@ai.toronto.edu (Jean-Francois Lamy) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun Subject: /dev/null broken !? Message-ID: <88Nov19.132207est.6196@neat.ai.toronto.edu> Date: 1 Dec 88 11:00:02 GMT Sender: usenet@rice.edu Organization: Rice University, Houston, Texas Lines: 12 Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu Original-Date: Sat, 19 Nov 88 13:22:06 EST X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 31, message 6 of 19 At least half a dozen times now, we have observed /dev/null mutating into something different. One day we found /dev/null had a non-zero size. Somehow programs took a very long time reading it... Another common mutation is to change to /dev/drum's major number. Then, the next morning, the script that rolls the logs innocently copies /dev/null to each log. From 80 Megs free in /var to 0 in a few seconds flat... These mutations have been seen on two different Sun 4s with RF3220 controllers, both running 4.0. Maybe this should go to some science-fiction mailing list :-). Jean-Francois Lamy lamy@ai.utoronto.ca, uunet!ai.utoronto.ca!lamy AI Group, Department of Creative Solutions, University of Toronto