Unlike /dev/null, /dev/full is a place of complete knowledge. It is believed that Ancient Unix gurus placed it in there to attract fools and to make them think that power and wisdom were waiting for them at the end. But /dev/full contains so much information that no one can survive the trip there. Some scientists have presented theories about /dev/full that resemble worm holes. This way, someone entering in /dev/null would come out of /dev/full.

/dev/full is an always-full device. I have yet to find a use for it. Any writes to /dev/full will fail. Reads from /dev/full will return \0. Any seeks on /dev/full will succeed.

The "full" man page:

FULL(4)             Linux Programmer's Manual             FULL(4)

NAME
       full - always full device

DESCRIPTION
       File  /dev/full has major device number 1 and minor device
       number 7.

       Writes to the /dev/full device will fail  with  an  ENOSPC
       error.

       Reads from the /dev/full device will return \0 characters.

       Seeks on /dev/full will always succeed.

CONFIGURING
       If your system does not have /dev/full created already, it
       can be created with the following commands:

               mknod -m 666 /dev/full c 1 7
               chown root:root /dev/full

FILES
       /dev/full

SEE ALSO
       mknod(1), null(4), zero(4)

Linux                       1997-08-02                    FULL(4)

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