[MLUG] procmail: Error while writing to "/dev/null"

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Last night I decided to try to install ntop on my Solaris box.  I started 
getting a lot of errors during the install:

procmail: Error while writing to "/dev/null"

It turned out that /dev/null had been changed by the "configure" script of 
either notop or of one of the required libraries I tried to install so 
that it was a regular file!  It took me a few minutes of web surfing to 
figure out that I needed to do this:

cd /dev
rm null
ln -s ../devices/pseudo/mm@0:null null

That's for Solaris, but something similar probably needs to be done when 
this happens in Linux.

That was a huge hassle.  Also, the notop people think it should be a 
breeze to compile and install their program on any UNIX OS, but my 
experience was different.  I ran configure at least 5 times.  First I was 
told that I needed libpcap, so I downloaded, compiled and installed. 
Next I was told that I needed gdbm libraries, so I downloaded, compiled 
and installed those.  Then I was told that I needed gd, so I downloaded, 
compiled and installed gd.  Then I was told that arpa/nameser.h wasn't 
working, so I tried replacing it with another one on my system.  Then 
"configure" ran without errors, but "make" still had errors and the 
program didn't compile.  So I didn't think it was all that easy to compile 
ntop on Solaris 8, and I still don't have it working!

Mike

_______________________________________________
members mailing list
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://mlug.missouri.edu/mailman/listinfo/members