/dev/null is a weird file about wsl HOT 7 CLOSED

/dev/null should be a character device with major 1 and minor 3, but it isn't in lxss, so tests like this fail:

[ -c /dev/null ] || echo broken

from wsl.

Maybe the whole idea behind the Linux/Ubuntu subsystem hasn't been fully implemented yet. The UNIX philosophy is that EVERYTHING is a file. For example, /dev/null is a virtual device file. This means that nothing, is something, and that something is represented in userland as a file.

On my Debian system, I get the following:

john@phobos:~$ stat /dev/null
File: '/dev/null'
Size: 0 Blocks: 0 IO Block: 4096 character special file
Device: 6h/6d Inode: 1037 Links: 1 Device type: 1,3
Access: (0666/crw-rw-rw-) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2016-04-06 20:33:12.884276144 -0700
Modify: 2016-04-06 20:33:12.884276144 -0700
Change: 2016-04-06 20:33:12.884276144 -0700
Birth: -

It looks like the Ubuntu subsystem doesn't see /dev/null as a "character special file" which I would think would redirect to >NUL on Windows.

from wsl.

Shouldn't it be fine if /dev/null was simply a symlink to \Device\Null?

from wsl.

One side-effect of this breaks sshd (openssh-server), as also mentioned here: MicrosoftDocs/WSL#17

from wsl.

The weird file is a known issue and something we intend to fix. It is currently on our backlog.

from wsl.

Another side-effect: I can't build a different version of Perl, either manually or using the perlbrew package, because its configure script checks for /dev/null's usability.

from wsl.

anybody want to take a guess at why this is in all of the binaries? https://gist.github.com/cloudkitsch/6f8bcb05f4006b5ea168eb6169ecbf12#file-gistfile1-txt-L335 quality control?

from wsl.