Linux :: /dev/null Permission Denied Error

This was a problem i faced and found that /dev/null is is not a charector devide. This is causing failure for all messages which are directed to /dev/null.

$ cat ash > /dev/null
/dev/null: Permission denied.

$ ls -l /dev/null
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Aug 9 11:22 /dev/null


Solution:
The problem seems to be with the permissions of the /dev/null. This seems to be read only at the moment for you. Check this by logging in as root and listing it with the command:

ls -l /dev/null

You should see this if everything is correctly set:
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3

If you get a different set of permissions like this maybe:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1, 3

then you should (as root) delete the /dev/null with:
rm /dev/null

and recreate it (as root) again with:
mknod -m 0666 /dev/null c 1 3

(The device number according to the Kernel source in the documentation under Documentation/devices.txt supposed to be Major=1 und Minor=3)

Now, list the /dev/null again and you should see the permissions as above. Hope this helps & it worked for me..