From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Sep 26 23:41:54 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id XAA02880 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 26 Sep 1997 23:41:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gdi.uoregon.edu (gdi.uoregon.edu [128.223.170.30]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id XAA02874 for ; Fri, 26 Sep 1997 23:41:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (dwhite@localhost) by gdi.uoregon.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id XAA15983; Fri, 26 Sep 1997 23:40:31 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 23:40:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White Reply-To: Doug White To: "Andrew E. Stevens" cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Help! In-Reply-To: <199709260150.VAA00280@ppp0002.log.on.ca> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 25 Sep 1997, Andrew E. Stevens wrote: > While trying to set up a gateway today, my /dev/de0 device (ethernet > card) somehow lost its device characteristics. Network interfaces don't have device special files, or in English, /dev/ directory entries, i.e. /dev/de0 doesn't really exist. It looks like you copied the /COPYRIGHT file to /dev/de0 as a test, and when you cat it back out, surprise, you get the original file back :-) It doesn't make much sense to `cat' a file down an Ethernet, it has to be chopped up into packets and you have to specify a port and destination and all that stuff which makes Ethernet work. > The same thing happened to /dev/null a couple of months ago, but since > things seemed to function normally, I ignored it. Perhaps you had some corruption in your /dev/ directory. You can usually fix errant devices by running /dev/MAKEDEV as root. Doug White | University of Oregon Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major