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Date:      Fri, 26 Sep 1997 23:40:31 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Doug White <dwhite@gdi.uoregon.edu>
To:        "Andrew E. Stevens" <root@ppp0002.log.on.ca>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Help!
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.970926233646.15854F-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199709260150.VAA00280@ppp0002.log.on.ca>

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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 <device> as root.

Doug White                              | University of Oregon  
Internet:  dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu    | Residence Networking Assistant
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite    | Computer Science Major





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