Trygve Selmer wrote:
> No_One wrote:
>>
>> I ran into a problem the other day, instead of running the correct command I
>> ran cat output /dev/lp0 no redirect. Natually nothing printed, however, now
>> nothing else will print as well, I get an error message Device or resource
>> busy. I can't get the resource un-busy.
>
> You have overwritten your device file, ie. /dev/lp0 is now an ordinary
> text file. Fix it as explained by Douglas (do this as root):

doubtful. cat reads *all* the files you give it on the command line,
concatenates their contents, and writes the result to standard output. IOW
the second argument to cat is *not* taken as the file to write something
to, it is taken as a file to read from.

all i can guess is that when cat tried to read from the device, it somehow
got into a state which won't allow it to be used anymore. (that guess is as
wild as this description is vague, however. i really don't know about these
things.) if so, unloading/reloading the lp kernel module may fix it, or
otherwise a reboot. i'm sure there's a cleaner way as well, but i have no
idea what it might be.

--
Joost Kremers joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)