rkhunter found this...

[Aaron Konstam]

On Fri, 2009-03-27 at 16:08 +0100, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
> Tom Horsley wrote:
> 
> > Could be, but I had /dev/null deleted on a machine once and
> > the ensuing fun was really spectacular :-).
> > 
> > Doing "whatever > /dev/null" wasn't too bad, but when
> > someone said "whatever < /dev/null" amazingly random things
> > could happen.
> 
> Even funnier stuff happened to me, with a broken installer of a BIG
> commercial app.
> It removed /dev/null (yes, let's remove the file in which we logged,
> which was called... /dev/null), then did a "something >/dev/null"
> and created a file owned by a specific user. :-)
> 
That is not how you create /dev/null. You use the MAKEDEV script to
create it. What you did will just create a file with that
name. /dev/null is a special file that can not be created that way.
> So,
> 
> echo "a" >/dev/null
> Permission denied.
> 
> Almost everything on the system appeared to be broken.
> 
> :-)
> 
> -- 
>    Roberto Ragusa    mail at robertoragusa.it
> 
--
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Obviously the only rational solution to your problem is suicide.
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Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam at sbcglobal.net