mknod problems

[Otter]

Hi,
I used mknod to create a file in /dev/, but I got the major/minor numbers wrong.

So I did rm <name> while in /dev/
It prompted, if I wanted to delete the special file, I said yes.

And I issued
mknod <name> c with the correct major and minor numbers

but mknod says
"<name>" invalid argument

<name> is not what I actually used, thats just so you see how I typed the command. The actual name was "toilet"

Any idea why mknod now will not let me create another file with that name? It does NOT say the file already exists.

Been searching the net, but can't seem to find a solution, seems most people who have any issues with mknod is from not being root. But I was logged in as root the entire time (not su)

The system is: FC3 with the latest stable kernel release from Redhat

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Otter

[AndyGreen]

lol problem creating the toilet device.

Is your toilet device module in memory? Maybe that is the issue: modprobe -r it first if so.

Another shadowy hand behind this kind of inexplicable evil is often SELinux. Try turning that off temporarily.

Try creating toilet1 with the same minor and major numbers. Try creating toilet with minor number+1.

[Otter]

Thanks for the tip, disabling SE did it. Not sure why though

And yes, it is a toilet!

School project and I need to make sure the device name is unique! Plus the mknod problem had me down in the dumps!

Joking aside, was fun learning about Linux, only had Fedora 3 installed for about 4 days, so the system is quite a bit different than winXP. Luckly it has a command line, and you can't beat the linux cmd line.

Thanks for your time!