/dev/null file issue


 
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Operating Systems AIX /dev/null file issue
# 1  
Old 02-25-2013
IBM /dev/null file issue

Hi Experts,

I Have a query. In one of my server I just came to know that there was /dev/null file which is a not a character file. Its just a normal file. I know the command to create the character file (/dev/null) but what is the procedure. Like should i delete /dev/null and create or anything else. I have a doubt that we can't remove /dev/null right ?

Expected format:
crw-rw-rw- 1 root system 2, 2 Feb 25 15:13 /dev/null

Format in my server:
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root system 0 Feb 25 15:22 /dev/null

Thanks & Regards,
B. Jayadeava
# 2  
Old 02-25-2013
Take my advice with a grain of salt since I'm not an AIX expert, but: Having a /dev/null that is not a character device could be a big problem, yes! Things might create huge files in it, expecting them to go into the bit bucket, but actually ending up on disk instead... Some memory mapping things might not work right... etc.

You're generally not supposed to delete anything in /dev/, no. But when things are messed up like this, don't know what else you're supposed to do.

See those numbers there, 2,2? They're what make /dev/null act like /dev/null and not be some other device. You give those to mknod when you create it, and also give it c to tell it it's a character device and not a block one.

Code:
rm /dev/null ; mknod -m 0666 /dev/null c 2 2 ; chown root:system /dev/null


Last edited by Corona688; 02-25-2013 at 11:51 AM..
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# 3  
Old 02-25-2013
Disclaimer: I have never used AIX. Everything I say below is based on the OP's statement that /dev/null is a regular file.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Corona688
Take my advice with a grain of salt since I'm not an AIX expert, but: Having a /dev/null that is not a character device could be a big problem, yes! Things might create huge files in it, expecting them to go into the bit bucket, but actually ending up on disk instead... Some memory mapping things might not work right... etc.
Although a less common scenario, there are times when using /dev/null for reading is useful. One example that comes to mind is with grep, to force its output to include filenames, you may explicitly list /dev/null in a find -exec predicate or an xargs invocation, to ensure that grep is never called with a single file argument. If /dev/null does not yield nothing but EOF ... woe.

Regards,
Alister

Last edited by alister; 02-25-2013 at 02:26 PM..
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# 4  
Old 02-25-2013
I think a more AIX way of recreating /dev/null on AIX is:

Code:
# rm /dev/null
# cfgmgr

I would be curious to know how it became a character file (implies someone with write perms on /dev removed it, and the first person to write to /dev/null (would be the new owner) recreated it as a regular file. I would expect that there is a script being run by root that is deleting it, and writing it again. Since you show 0 bytes, it is also being truncated as well.

So, your second security issue is when is it being removed? If you cannot answer this, the issue will come back and haunt you.
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# 5  
Old 02-26-2013
Was/is the file really "/dev/null" or is it rather "/dev/nulll" (3 "l"s!) ? The latter is a residue of some typo in an AIX script, i believe. I have seen it at various customers even in newly installed systems, so i suppose some IBM script, maybe in the HACMP installation procedure, is the culprit.

See also this thread .

I hope this helps.

bakunin
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# 6  
Old 03-08-2013
No it was /dev/null only... N i tried rm /dev/null but din allow me to...
# 7  
Old 03-08-2013
Real worls example of /dev/null usage with grep on HPUX systems, where grep lacks option to show filename where grep has matched the result.
Code:
find . -type f -exec grep "string" {} /dev/null \;
/root/test/string.txt:string

Sorry for the offtopic.
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