Re: Can't redirect to `/dev/stderr' (Permission denied)

[Aharon Robbins]

Gawk will use the actual /dev/stderr and /dev/fd/2 files if they exist
on your system.  I suggest you check the permissions on those files:

        ls -l /dev/stderr /dev/fd/2

This sounds like the source of your problem to me.

Thanks,

Arnold Robbins

> From: "Davis, Ricardo C." <address@hidden>
> To: "'address@hidden'" <address@hidden>
> Cc: "'address@hidden'" <address@hidden>,
>         "'address@hidden'" <address@hidden>,
>         "Boyt, James C. (Exch)"
>        <address@hidden>
> Subject: Can't redirect to `/dev/stderr' (Permission denied)
> Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 14:25:37 -0400
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm using a GNU/Linux system (Red Hat 6.2 running kernel 2.2.19-6.2.1).  I
> have a number of applications that use gawk.  One in particular is
> mission-critical that was working well as of 5/8/2001 (the last time the
> gawk program was used).  Today I tested it and noticed that the gawk program
> failed at the point where it printed output to stderr.  I checked the RPM
> package information on gawk:
> __________________________________________________________________________
>
> Name: gawk                         Relocations: (not relocateable)
> Version: 3.0.4                             Vendor: Red Hat, Inc.
> Release: 2                             Build Date: Thu 03 Feb 2000
> 09:23:05 AM EST
> Install date: Tue 20 Feb 2001 11:02:03 AM EST      Build Host:
> porky.devel.redhat.com
> Group: Applications/Text             Source RPM: gawk-3.0.4-2.src.rpm
> Size: 2357406                          License: GPL
> Packager: Red Hat, Inc. <http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla>
> Summary: The GNU version of the awk text processing utility.
> Description:
> The gawk packages contains the GNU version of awk, a text processing
> utility.  Awk interprets a special-purpose programming language to do
> quick and easy text pattern matching and reformatting jobs.
>
> Install the gawk package if you need a text processing utility. Gawk is
> considered to be a standard Linux tool for processing text.
> __________________________________________________________________________
>
>
> I then attempted to isolate it to the smallest possible awk program and
> input data file that reproduces the problem.  Here's the test file
> (gawktest):
> __________________________________________________________________________
>
> This is a test gawk file.
> I think that something is broken.
> __________________________________________________________________________
>
>
> After reviewing the information in the "Special File Names in gawk" section
> (http://www.gnu.org/manual/gawk/html_node/gawk_65.html#SEC66), I attempted
> to run a "one-liner" gawk program using file "gawktest" as input; here's the
> result:
> __________________________________________________________________________
>
> $ gawk '{print $0 > "/dev/stderr";}' gawktest  
> gawk: cmd. line:1: (FILENAME=gawktest FNR=1) fatal: can't redirect to
> `/dev/stderr' (Permission denied)
> __________________________________________________________________________
>
>
> This should have printed each line of input on stderr.  Using "/dev/fd/2"
> instead of "/dev/stderr" yields the same error.
>
> So I decided to take a look at what has software has been changed on the
> server since the last time the gawk script with the redirect to stderr:
> __________________________________________________________________________
>
> $ rpm -qa --queryformat '%{installtime} %{name}-%{version}-%{release}
> %{installtime:date}\n' | sort -nr +1 | sed -e 's/^[^ ]* //' | head -5
> mktemp-1.5-2.1.6x Tue 22 May 2001 12:19:14 PM EDT
> man-1.5i-0.6x.1 Tue 22 May 2001 12:19:14 PM EDT
> krb5-libs-1.1.1-27 Fri 18 May 2001 02:03:15 AM EDT
> krb5-configs-1.1.1-27 Fri 18 May 2001 02:03:14 AM EDT
> gnupg-1.0.5-0.6.x Fri 18 May 2001 02:03:14 AM EDT
> __________________________________________________________________________
>
>
> Hmmm ... does gawk use mktemp?  I suspect it probably does and that the most
> recent version has caused the problem.  
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ricardo Davis
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>                     Intermedia Communications
> Ricardo Davis                                ABN-Information Systems
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