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Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 11:10:44 +0200
From: Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
To: Cygwin List <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: Errors when trying to access /dev/null
Message-ID: <20031015091044.GK14344@cygbert.vinschen.de>
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On Wed, Oct 15, 2003 at 01:21:37AM -0400, Sandy Pyke wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I am new to Cygwin and I've run across a problem. I have installed Cygwin on
> two different Windows XP Pro machines and one is working fine and the other
> is not. On both machines I did a Default installation plus some development
> packages (gcc, make, gtk2-win32, etc...)
> 
> On the machine giving me troubles I get a whole series of errors related to
> /dev/null when I try and run ./configure for a few different packages. Here
> are some example errors I received:
> 
> ./configure: cannot create /dev/null: directory nonexistent
> ...
> ./configure: cannot create /dev/null: directory nonexistent
> ./.lineno: cannot create /dev/null: directory nonexistent
> ...
> ./.lineno: cannot create /dev/null: directory nonexistent
> :error: cannot create .lineno; rerun with a POSIX shell
> 
> To simplify matters I tried running the following commands:
> 
> "ls > /dev/null" returns "bash: /dev/null: No such file or directory"
> 
> I created a file called null in my home directory and then ran the following
> command:
> 
> "ln -s null /dev/null" which returned "ln: /dev/null: File exists"
> 
> Needless to say I'm now confused... Can anyone tell me which package
> includes support for /dev/null? And are there any environment variables I
> need to set for this to work? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I
> can provide more details if required...

/dev/null is a virtual device, entirely controlled inside of the Cygwin
DLL itself.  There's no need to create a /dev directory or a /dev/null
device node, nor do you need any other package.

None of the above information is enough to figure out what the exact
problem is.  First, in Windows Explorer remove a /dev directory if
you (or any configure script) created one.  Then try again to access
/dev/null.  If it still doesn't work, try `strace ls /dev/null' and
post the output to this list.

Btw., read http://cygwin.com/problems.html.  We don't even know which
version of Cygwin you're running.

Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Developer                                mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat, Inc.

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