Question

Problem with /dev/null - Permission denied

Hi all,

I think that I’ve messed up the /dev/null on my droplet. When I login with my non-root user I get the following error:

-bash: /dev/null: Permission denied

The permissions of the file are:

-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 1, 3 Jul 10 19:38 /dev/null

Are those permissions wrong? Do I have to change them or do I need to recreate the file?

Thanks a lot!

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Bobby Iliev
Site Moderator
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• October 18, 2019
Accepted Answer

Hello,

The permissions do not really look correct. What you could do in this case is just recreate the /dev/null. You can do that with the following commands:

  • Login as root to your droplet, and then run:
rm /dev/null
mknod /dev/null c 1 3
chmod 666 /dev/null

Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby

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