bash: /dev/null: cannot overwrite existing file

[RayCxggg]

Hi, I am working on Ubuntu 20.04 with WSL2.

After I install oh-my-bash, it works well for a while. Then when I start a new terminal, it prints

It seems that some lines in the .bashrc triggered the problem. The normal functions of bash seem fine so far.

This is my .bash_profile:

if [[ -f ~/.bashrc ]]; then
  source ~/.bashrc
fi

I have only changed the OSH_THEME field and added a few export PATH= lines at the end of .bashrc. Those lines worked fine in my old .bashrc file. Please help me figure out what is wrong. Thanks!

[RayCxggg]

Some add up here. After I typed rm bash, I tried tab to complete the line for rm bash_profile and remove the wrong bash_profile file. However, it printed out the same error again.

[akinomyoga]

Can you paste the result of the following command?

$ ls -l /dev/null* | cat -v

[RayCxggg]

Here is the output:

root@LAPTOP-LTLGK41V:~# ls -l /dev/null* | cat -v
-bash: /dev/null: cannot overwrite existing file
-bash: /dev/null: cannot overwrite existing file
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   0 Sep 26 12:35 /dev/null
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 136 Sep 25 15:09 /dev/null.old

[akinomyoga]

The file /dev/null in your seems to be replaced by a regular file. The file /dev/null should be a character device and the result of ls -l /dev/null should look the following (this is the result in my Ubuntu 20.04/WSL2):

$ ls -l /dev/null*
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 1, 3 2023-09-26 19:33:14 /dev/null

Could you try solutions in the answers in the following Q&A?

• linux - /dev/null file became regular file - Server Fault

[RayCxggg]

Thanks a lot. It perfectly solved the problem. BTW, I am just curious that how /dev/null was changed into a regular file?

[akinomyoga]

Great!

BTW, I am just curious that how /dev/null was changed into a regular file?

Hmm, I don't have an idea. Since we haven't seen other reports to Oh-My-Bash (OMB), I guess it is not caused by OMB. In the past, Bash 4.2 had a bug where /dev/null was removed from the file system when HISTFILE=/dev/null was specified. It might be caused by a similar bug in a certain program.

[j17018]

The issue is that maybe you tried to copy or to move a file to /dev/null. /dev/null is not a folder, it is a special file. And when a file is moved to /dev/null, it breaks its properties.