Re: mount /dev/null /mnt

From: Arto Viitanen (av_at_cs.uta.fi)
Date: 03/24/04 

Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 13:45:34 +0200

>>>>> "Georgios" == Georgios S <astatos@gmx.at> writes:

 Georgios> Hello, iīm running am OpenBSD 3.2 maschine and i would like to
 Georgios> mount the /dev/null device on /mnt. So i can share the /mnt folder
 Georgios> in the smb.conf (Samba).

 Georgios> Unfortunately that dosnīt work. Could somebody tell me if this is
 Georgios> possible at all?

To my knowledge, you can only mount filesystems, or actually block devices
that have filesystems on them. /dev/null is a character device, so it seems
impossible. Some OSs have loop devices, that let you mount normal files THAT
HAVE FILESYSTEM, but I don't know how they work. I tried on Linux with ext2
(Linux' default filesystem) and /dev/null. I got

# mount /dev/null /mnt -t ext2 -o loop

ioctl: LOOP_SET_FD: Invalid argument

I guess the problem is, each filesystem has some table of content, which
cannot fit in an empty file. 

-- 
Arto V. Viitanen				                  av@cs.uta.fi
University of Tampere, Department of Computer Sciences
Tampere, Finland				      http://www.cs.uta.fi/~av/