Re: LYNX-DEV /dev/null and the CERT bug

[Scott McGee (Personal)]

Henry askes what a "correct and functional" /dev/null looks like, how to test
it, and what testing the CERT bug did to it.

First off, what a correct /dev/null looks like and what happened to it are
both potentially system dependant.

On my Solaris system, /dev/null was changed to not have the world read/write
permissions it should have, and, in fact, it is a link to a special file, and
the link was changed to a file somehow. I beleive that this happened after the
testing as a result of attempted use of the messed up /dev/null, but can be
sure.

My suggestion if you have tested the CERT bug on your system is to do the 
following:

ls >/dev/null;cat /dev/null

and ensure that there is no error and no output. If that works, /dev/null is
likely working.

Scott

Scott McGee: Salt Lake Community College Webmaster | When in danger,
___________________________________________________| or in doubt,
Email: address@hidden (Scott McGee)         | run in circles,
Web:   http://www.slcc.edu/infotech/webmaster.html | scream and shout.
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