/dev/zero

[Judd Pickell]

And if you get a hold of someone's linux box you can really freak them out
by mapping their keyboard input into the mixer. Nothing funnier than seeing
people jump five feet when they start to type and all they ear is a very
loud noise.. :)

Okay... Maybe that is just a bit too mean.. ;)

Sincerely,
Judd Pickell

On 2/19/06, Mike Garfias <mike at garfias.org> wrote:
>
> Its not a file, you don't open it.  It is a device that spits out zeros
> (or
> random).
>
> Use dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test bs=512 count=1024
> then open /tmp/test with your favorite editor.
>
> You need to realize that things under /dev/ are NOT ordinary files.  But
> unix
> is such that it represents everything as a file.
>
> There are four types of files:
> Ordinary Files (what you think of as a "file")
> Directories (yes, they're files too)
> Special Files (IO devices, terminals - think ttys, etc)
> Links - Symlinks & hardlinks (yes, they're "files" too!)
>
> You can't just treat them all as files, they are different.  But, there
> are
> some very good reasons for representing them as files.  For instance, if
> you
> wanted to listen to a wav, you could cat some.wav > /dev/mixer to send it
> to
> the mixer device.  Same with a printer cat some.file.txt > /dev/lp/0 - you
> might not get what you expect, but it does work.
>
>
> Mike spoke forth with the blessed manuscript:
> > The same thing happened with /dev/random
> > what should I open it with?
> >
> > On Sunday 19 February 2006 06:44 pm, Gerard Snitselaar wrote:
> > > This piqued my interest: "What ?does this look
> > >
> > > > like," I thought. So I typed 'jpico /dev/zero' and guess what
> happened!
> > > > NOTHING.
> > > >
> > > > The enter went to the next line but nothing happened. No pretty
> colors
> > > > and prompt.
> >
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