/dev/null is way too polite. For my services I much prefer to rely on the http://foaas.com/ API
Awesome. I thought "this is exactly the kind of thing my former colleagues would find hilarious". Then I scrolled down.
They wrote it.
/dev/null as a Service
91–96 of 96 posts
Re: /dev/null as a Service
#92One reason I am not a devfs fan is because I'm a mknod(1) user. For example, FreeBSD has one of those famous "_________ is deprecated" bold warnings regarding mknod. It is not deprecated in my usage. I use it all the time. I do not rely on /dev/null. I make my own null character devices as I need them.
> I do not rely on /dev/null. > I make my own null character devices as I need them. Why? Is there ever a reason to have more than one file on your system which acts as a /dev/null?
"Is there ever a reason to have more than one..."
Yes. It's called a chroot jail.
One often needs mknod to build chroot jails because the program or programs that one intends to run in the chrooted in the jail directory require access to certain device files.
Re: /dev/null as a Service
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Why?" Why not? In my case, the reason is because it's shorter to type. I would expect most longtime UNIX users have experienced what happens when, for one reason or another, /dev/null is not a null character device and you have scripts or programs writing to it as if it was. By the time you realize that this has happened, it's too late -- data has already been saved to this file. There may be various workarounds for…
And you need to be root, apparently.
setuidgid luser mknod ...
Re: /dev/null as a Service
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah, that's almost useful. It could be a crowd-sourced random number stream based on noise generated by a network of mobile phones.
I could see a service that just accepts any HTTP you send to it as being kinda useful for early testing of client-side software. Personally I'd just use netcat, but maybe a service would be easier for some people.
Re: /dev/null as a Service
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you need to be root, apparently.
setuidgid luser mknod ... Are you sure?
Great. You just gave luser at least read access to a whole lot of your hardware, including your whole hard disks, swap space, and some device nodes which potentially crash the system upon random reading.
Re: /dev/null as a Service
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
setuidgid luser mknod ... Are you sure?
Great. You just gave luser at least read access to a whole lot of your hardware, including your whole hard disks, swap space, and some device nodes which potentially crash the system upon random reading.
My system has only one user: me. I am the only one using it.
Multiuser UNIX is a relic from a long past era of shared computing. The "root" concept creates more security issues than it solves. That's why Plan 9 did away with it.