guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) (02/26/91)
>Apparently when the daemonizing code was written "/dev/null" (a more >likely candidate) was not gauranteed to exist under all flavors of >Unix (may still not for all I know ;-). It's not *guaranteed* to exist under *any* flavor of UNIX; somebody could have removed it, for example (see "comp.unix.aix", I think, for an example of a system bug that blows it away). It's *likely* to exist under all flavors of UNIX, including 4.xBSD, whence that daemonizing code came. You may or may not care whether your daemon can cope with "/dev/null" being missing or unopenable.
mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse) (02/27/91)
In article <6276@auspex.auspex.com>, guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
[stuff about daemons assuming, or not assuming, that /dev/null exists]
We once managed to lose /dev/null. I forget how, but I assume you, the
system cannot function normally when this happens! Many programs, some
fundamental to the system, break in unobvious ways. It took quite some
time before I found the cause....
(Oh yes. "the system" was either mtXinu 4.3+NFS or SunOS 3.x, I forget
which. Probably the latter.)
der Mouse
old: mcgill-vision!mouse
new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu