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From: Nick Bowler <nbowler AT draconx DOT ca>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Reading /dev/null seems broken.
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2013 02:48:24 +0000 (UTC)
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On Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:17:38 -0800, rugxulo wrote:
> On Monday, January 14, 2013 10:18:07 PM UTC-6, Nick Bowler wrote:
[...]
>>   sed 's/x//' < /dev/null > /dev/null
[...]
>>   cat /dev/null > file
>> 
>> This is expected to produce an empty output file, but instead, gigabytes
>> of garbage are written.  Seems to be pretty much the same root problem.
>> 
>> While in this case I can work around these problems, should DJGPP be
>> presenting a /dev/null that works properly?
> 
> I had this same problem and finally investigated it a little over a year ago
> (using Ruby 1.8.7 as example). See the old thread from 2012-12-21 titled
> 'Ruby 1.8.7 p352 (DOSEMU + sh -c "./configure && make")'.
> 
> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/comp.os.msdos.djgpp/ruby/comp.os.msdos.djgpp/f3YuJqfFHug/ReNuu-yCwQEJ
> 
> Long story short:  'Upgrading the /usr/lib/dosemu/drive_z/kernel.sys file to 
> latest 2040 version apparently "seems" to have fixed it to work 
> without needing a patch to configure.'

Thanks for the pointer.  Indeed, updating the FreeDOS kernel to the
latest version appears to solve the problems with my sed and cat test
cases.

Sadly, this upgrade seems to have introduced a different /dev/null
problem.  Now the configure script hangs earlier, on a command similar
to this one:

  awk 'END { print "OK" }' /dev/null

which should print OK.  Surprisingly, this actually works on the original
kernel (2036, it seems) but with the new 2041 kernel the command hangs :(

Another FreeDOS problem?

Thanks,
  Nick