From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Sep 13 12:25:58 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CF4EB16A4BF for ; Sat, 13 Sep 2003 12:25:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hermes.pressenter.com (hermes.pressenter.com [69.58.128.19]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A9B1A43FE9 for ; Sat, 13 Sep 2003 12:25:57 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nospam@hiltonbsd.com) Received: from [69.58.132.87] (helo=daggar.sbgnet.local) by hermes.pressenter.com with smtp (Exim 3.16 #1) id 19yG1r-0006AP-00; Sat, 13 Sep 2003 14:25:56 -0500 Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2003 14:25:54 -0500 From: Stephen Hilton To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-Id: <20030913142554.3e3e0902.nospam@hiltonbsd.com> In-Reply-To: References: X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.4 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.9) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: Scott Kupferschmidt Subject: Re: /dev/null permission issues X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2003 19:25:58 -0000 On Sat, 13 Sep 2003 14:47:23 -0400 (EDT) Scott Kupferschmidt wrote: > Hello, > > I know I've sent in once before regarding, but no one has seemed to know > how to fix this issue. It seems when I install boxes with 4.8-rel cd the > /dev/null changes permission every minute to non-writable by any user, > breaking a lot of scripts piping output to /dev/null. Anytime I try chmod > 666 it, within the next clock minute, it's back to 644. > > I've tried rebuilding the device completely, cvsup'ing to a newer version > (4.9-pre), nothing seems to fix it and it only seemed to happen on > machines that I originally installed with 4.8-rel. If anyone has some > insight on this issue, it would be greatly appreciated as I am pulling > hair trying to figure out this problem. Scott, >From a previous thread: -------------------snip--------------------- On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Ed Alley wrote: > >> I'm running FreeBSD-4.8. Sometimes the file permissions for /dev/null >> gets mysteriously changed by some unknown process to: >> >> crw------- 1 root wheel 2, 2 Sep 2 11:20 /dev/null On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, David Landgren wrote: >> ..., the moral of the story is, what have you installed recently? On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Matthew Seaman wrote: >> ... It would have to be a root-owned process ... On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Scott Kupferschmidt wrote: >> I had the same problem and still unable to figure it out.. I thankyou all for the above comments. They were helpful to me in finding the problem: When I thought about it for a time I realized that it happens on days that I was doing administrative work as ROOT! It was NETSCAPE! running under root. It turns out that I periodically tweak our router via Netscape. If I happen to be logged in as root on my FreeBSD terminal when I log into the router with Netscape, then after I'm finished with my work and close Netscape, I find that the permissions on /dev/null have been reset to: crw-------. I'm running Netscape-4.76. I also have a late version of Mozilla installed which doesn't seem to mangle the file permissions on /dev/null the way Netscape does. I also don't need to be logged in as root when I run Netscape to tweak the router, it just happens that when I'm doing other administrative stuff I think to look at the router also. (:->) Ed Alley wea@llnl.gov -------------------snip--------------------- You did not mention running Netscape 4.67 as root, but I thought I would throw this out here, in case it is relevent. Regards, Stephen Hilton nospam@hiltonbsd.com