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arkane
l33t
Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 918
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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 Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2002 12:32 am Post subject: /dev/null - Permission denied, and things stop working! |
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I'm having a bit of an issue now, and I'm not sure where it started!
Whats going on is, both vmware and gnome are both having issues writing to /dev/null.
the permissions on my /dev/null are :
crwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1, 3 Dec 31 1969 /dev/null
The thing that is wierding me out is the date on it... dec 31, 1969. My system date is fine, I checked that out: Mon Jul 8 17:39:25 MST 2002
This is a brand new system, so there shouldn't be any Y2K issues, either. gnome just refuses to come up, and there aren't any errors. when I try to start vmware, it spouts off: Unable to fix standard file descriptors.
I can get that error even at pure console, so it's not even trying to open a display before I get that error.
And now, for the normal disclosure: I don't remember doing anything that would make this happen  If I did, well.. I'd love to know what!
I've re-emerged devfs and that didn't do anything. I've even re-emerged gtk+, that didn't do anything. (as if it would lol)
I'll admit I'm a day or two behind on updates, but that shouldn't make it crash.
Has anyone else had these problems? |
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trythil
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 06 Jun 2002
Posts: 123
Location: RHIT, Terre Haute, IN, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2002 12:36 am Post subject: |
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Uh, /dev/null should be set world-writable and world-readable.
A
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chmod 666 /dev/null
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will fix this.
In case you don't know what /dev/null is, it's the "bit bucket", where unwanted output goes to. Think of it as a bottomless pit to send stuff to. Let's say that you had a program printing debug info to the error stream, and you wanted to get that off the console. You'd execute the program like this:
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./program 2> /dev/null
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which says "redirect error stream to /dev/null". A lot of programs do this as a way to get rid of unwanted junk; however, you've got to remember that devices are treated just like files. If a program does not have sufficient write permissions to a device, the write operation will fail.
Also, /dev/null is, along with rm and touch, the butt of many bad UNIX jokes.
The date is just the way it is -- it's a devfs issue. Don't worry about it.
Sounds like you did WAY too much work. |
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arkane
l33t
Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 918
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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| Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2002 12:43 am Post subject: |
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| trythil wrote: | Uh, /dev/null should be set world-writable and world-readable.
A
| Code: |
chmod 666 /dev/null
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will fix this.
In case you don't know what /dev/null is, it's the "bit bucket", where unwanted output goes to. Think of it as a bottomless pit to send stuff to. Let's say that you had a program printing debug info to the error stream, and you wanted to get that off the console. You'd execute the program like this:
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./program 2> /dev/null
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which says "redirect error stream to /dev/null".
Also, /dev/null is, along with rm and touch, the butt of many bad UNIX jokes.
The date is just the way it is -- it's a devfs issue. Don't worry about it.
Sounds like you did WAY too much work. |
thanks
I know what /dev/null is, and I know it should be world readable/writable... but it isn't 
And I'm not sure why either, considering devfs sets all the permission on boot.
I even went as far as to put a line in the /etc/devfsd.conf to change the permissions of /dev/null to 777 but it still wouldn't take. (I've done the same to change permissions for /dev/hda to root.vmware to allow vmware group users to have full access to /dev/hda, and it worked)
I'm at a loss. |
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arkane
l33t
Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 918
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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| Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2002 12:47 am Post subject: |
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I just changed by hand the /dev/null to 666 (rw across the board) and tried starting startx (.initrc has "gnomesession" in it and thats it) and it won't kick off.
At least vmware isn't spouting off anymore though....
lol
I wonder wtf happened to make this problem occur, unless there was some gnome2 update that did something.... |
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karmakillernz
n00b
Joined: 01 May 2002
Posts: 55
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| Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2002 1:41 am Post subject: |
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Arkane, I had trouble with Gnome 1.4 not starting and it turned out to be Gconf playing up. I emerged an earlier version and it worked perfectly.
The problem was the 'Starting Gnome' screen came up and nothing else happened. With no error message. It sounds like that's whats happening with you.... |
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arkane
l33t
Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 918
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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| Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2002 4:26 am Post subject: |
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Well, I don't know how to downgrade an application, however I wonder if that is the issue. I don't even get to the gnome splash screen, it just sits at the stipled grey background.
KDE works fine, however fluxbox is acting odd (went into a race condition today on me... I had to ssh in and reboot my system after killing X, X was using 95% of the CPU and the harddisk was full throttle) I say fluxbox because I haven't had the issue with KDE yet... (yet:) ) Oroborus, Ion don't even startup (much the same as gnome2). I'm behind an LRP firewall, and the logs aren't showing anything odd, so I don't think anyone hacked into my system.
I wonder if just recompiling everything from scratch (qpkg -nc -I | sort | uniq | NOCOLOR="true" xargs emerge) would fix things.... It would only take me 6 hours to do that. |
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delta407
Bodhisattva
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 2876
Location: Chicago, IL
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| Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2002 4:33 am Post subject: |
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| arkane wrote: | | I wonder if just recompiling everything from scratch (qpkg -nc -I | sort | uniq | NOCOLOR="true" xargs emerge) would fix things.... It would only take me 6 hours to do that. |
Errr... you are aware you can just run "emerge -e world", right?
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I don't believe in witty sigs. |
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arkane
l33t
Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 918
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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| Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2002 4:45 am Post subject: |
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| delta407 wrote: | | arkane wrote: | | I wonder if just recompiling everything from scratch (qpkg -nc -I | sort | uniq | NOCOLOR="true" xargs emerge) would fix things.... It would only take me 6 hours to do that. |
Errr... you are aware you can just run "emerge -e world", right? |
I haven't tested -e world for quite some time now, so it might quite possibly work. I had issues with it for quite some time (propogated the world file and didn't even do the stuff in there) so I found out about the qpkg way and went with it for a while.
As with most things, there are more than one way to do things... besides, aliases are wonderful things At least I know that qpkg will list every package installed. emerge -e world won't lessen the compile time, however. |
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arkane
l33t
Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 918
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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| Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2002 6:07 pm Post subject: |
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just rebooted and the changes I made to /dev/null (chmod 666) stayed.
I guess devfs doesn't mess with /dev/null... |
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arkane
l33t
Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 918
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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| Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2002 8:11 pm Post subject: |
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Well, I recompiled everything (did an emerge -e system && emerge -e world) and now gnome is working again.
I don't know why, don't know how, but I guess that fixed it. |
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rana
n00b
Joined: 05 Sep 2004
Posts: 8
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| Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 12:02 pm Post subject: Quick (2 command) fix. |
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On the system experiencing that problem here, the permissions on both /dev/null and /dev/tty were wrong. Both had become 660 somehow; chmod'ing both to 666 made KDE start correctly again.
chmod 666 /dev/null
chmod 666 /dev/tty |
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Kiroku6
Apprentice
Joined: 14 Feb 2004
Posts: 283
Location: unknown some hard drive on some server
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| Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 10:03 pm Post subject: |
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How do you get it to stick? Whenever I restart, I get the message again, when I log in.
Also, this is a devfs issue???? I am using udev.
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WOOOOOO! GENTOO!!!!! |
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rana
n00b
Joined: 05 Sep 2004
Posts: 8
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| Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 11:09 pm Post subject: |
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| I set the device tarball line in /etc/conf.d/rc to no; I'm not sure if this is a general solution, but after doing that and rebooting the system automagically worked much better... (after KDE was starting again, starting a konsole opened a window but didn't give a shell prompt, and trying to open an xterm didn't succeed at all.) ... after rebooting after reviewing the gentoo udev guide, everything was ok. |
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Sachankara
l33t
Joined: 11 Jun 2004
Posts: 696
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
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| Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 12:56 pm Post subject: Re: Quick (2 command) fix. |
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| rana wrote: | On the system experiencing that problem here, the permissions on both /dev/null and /dev/tty were wrong. Both had become 660 somehow; chmod'ing both to 666 made KDE start correctly again.
chmod 666 /dev/null
chmod 666 /dev/tty |
Did you recently update your system? If so, you need to update your udev config file using etc-update ...
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Gentoo Hardened Linux 2.6.21 + svorak (Swedish dvorak) |
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ArdentlyGnarly
n00b
Joined: 18 May 2005
Posts: 6
Location: Fort Worth / Little Rock
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 9:58 pm Post subject: Konsole Problem |
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Rana,
I just solved a similar problem with not being able to get a prompt in konsole. I found the solution here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-324873-highlight-konsole+prompt.html.
Basically, it boils down to this:
1. run etc-update
2. reboot
This will put many of your config files back to a sensible state... but in the process you could lose some custom configuration, so be careful. This might be a heavy-handed approached, but it worked when nothing else did. |
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