I just got a bunch of error messages because I could no longer write to /dev/null as a normal user, as it had changed mode to 0644. Unfortunately I had many things running. As the change must have had root privileges, I assume it has to be an ebuild from my update world, a cron script or service running as root, or a suid root binary. I expect some ebuild. This is the second time this happened to me. I don't really know what might have been the cause the first time, whether I was running emerges as well. I can imagine this bug being marked NEEDINFO unless you have a good idea what happened that I didn't think of. But I still want to see this entered in the database, so that other users experiencing something similar might find it and add comments, to eventually get some idea of what may cause this.
Created attachment 106384 [details] elogs in tar.bz2 format These are the elogs emerge was processing from my last successful use of /dev/null as a user up to the moment I noticed the bug: sys-apps:portage-2.1.2_rc4-r7:20070110-121621.log elog/sys-apps:portage-2.1.2_rc4-r7:20070110-121634.log sys-libs:timezone-data-2007a:20070110-121648.log elog/sys-libs:timezone-data-2007a:20070110-121716.log sys-apps:baselayout-1.12.8-r3:20070110-121726.log dev-db:mysql-5.0.32:20070110-121750.log elog/dev-db:mysql-5.0.32:20070110-123728.log dev-perl:version-0.68:20070110-123743.log app-text:silvercity-0.9.7:20070110-123754.log dev-java:bsf-2.3.0-r4:20070110-125252.log app-emacs:tramp-2.1.7-r1:20070110-125419.log app-emacs:tramp-2.1.7:20070110-125439.log dev-java:batik-1.6-r3:20070110-125443.log media-video:realplayer-10.0.8-r1:20070110-125914.log dev-java:jdom-1.0-r2:20070110-125934.log media-sound:audacious-1.2.2:20070110-130030.log games-board:qgo-1.5.2-r1:20070110-130220.log This is where I noticed /dev/null had changed mode. I changed the mode, then I tried rerunning some of these ebuilds, those likely to touch /dev/null, but its mode didn't change again. Those were me rebuilds trying to reproduce the problem: games-board:qgo-1.5.2-r1:20070110-140831.log sys-libs:timezone-data-2007a:20070110-141505.log sys-libs:timezone-data-2007a:20070110-141635.log elog/sys-libs:timezone-data-2007a:20070110-141700.log dev-db:mysql-5.0.32:20070110-142149.log elog/dev-db:mysql-5.0.32:20070110-144204.log sys-apps:baselayout-1.12.8-r3:20070110-153642.log
Well, then reopen once you find out what's causing this. Thanks.
This happens when installing mysql. Before I emerge MySQL: # ls -l /dev/null crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 Feb 13 11:19 /dev/null # And after # ls -l /dev/null crw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 1, 3 Feb 13 11:19 /dev/null # , which causes warnings in SSH, etc, etc. Inconvenient - not a show stopper for me, but worth fixing.