Is Dev Null a device?

To begin, /dev/null is a special file called the null device in Unix systems. Colloquially it is also called the bit-bucket or the blackhole because it immediately discards anything written to it and only returns an end-of-file EOF when read.

Where does Dev Null go?

It’s a special file that’s present in every single Linux system. However, unlike most other virtual files, instead of reading, it’s used to write. Whatever you write to /dev/null will be discarded, forgotten into the void. It’s known as the null device in a UNIX system.

What creates Dev Null?

In 1996, Dev Null was an animated virtual reality character created by Leo Laporte for MSNBC’s computer and technology TV series The Site. Dev/null is also the name of a vampire hacker in the computer game Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption.

Can I Tail Dev Null?

To answer your question under what circumstances tail -f /dev/null might finish and therefore continue to the next line in something like a shell script: /dev/null (as with everything in Linux) is a file. When executing tail onto any file, the file must be opened using a filedescriptor.

What is Dev Null in crontab?

/dev/null is a black hole where any data sent, will be discarded. 2 is the file descriptor for Standard Error. > is for redirect. & is the symbol for file descriptor (without it, the following 1 would be considered a filename) 1 is the file descriptor for Standard Out.

Can you read from Dev Null?

You write to /dev/null every time you use it in a command such as touch file 2> /dev/null. You read from /dev/null every time you empty an existing file using a command such as cat /dev/null > bigfile or just > bigfile. Because of the file’s nature, you can’t change it in any way; you can only use it.

What is Dev TTY?

/dev/tty stands for the controlling terminal (if any) for the current process. To find out which tty’s are attached to which processes use the “ps -a” command at the shell prompt (command line). Look at the “tty” column. For the shell process you’re in, /dev/tty is the terminal you are now using.

Is Dev null a file or directory?

Usage. The null device is typically used for disposing of unwanted output streams of a process, or as a convenient empty file for input streams. This is usually done by redirection. The /dev/null device is a special file, not a directory, so one cannot move a whole file or directory into it with the Unix mv command.