Comment 35 for bug 63031

It happened today on my box too. It runs Ubuntu 10.04 i386 and the box was up an running for several days without issue. I cannot unlock GNOME screensaver this morning. I tried to login from text terminal and I was able to do it but I see many errors '-'-'-bash: /dev/null permision denied'

I found that /dev/null device is just a file, not device:

$ cd /dev; ls -l null
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 85 2011-02-22 09:23 null

I fixed the issue with command (it creates standard devices)

# cd /dev; MAKEDEV std
$ cd /dev; ls -l null
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 2011-02-22 09:31 null

The issue is fixed, I can unlock screensaver and login to GNOME now. The key question is, 'who deleted /dev/null device??' That was not me and it happened during night... Some application installed on my desktop has a bug that removes /dev/null device.

My guess is that it can be 'xz' or 'xzdec' or 'xz-utils' or 'epub-utils' or 'txt2pdb' or 'plucker' package; I installed these on my box yesterday.