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To: ShadowAce

kind of a silly article. The following isn’t really addressed to you, Shadowace, but is more a general comment one one of the things the article referenced.

In the administrivia department, the reason you can’t create a directory or file called ‘con’, is because that is the reserved word for the console itself. You used to be able to see this by copying a file to ‘con’ and see the contents scroll on your screen. Also, if you did a “dir con” you would see a ‘con’ directory no matter what directory you were in. There are other reserved words, like ‘prn’ for the printer port, ‘nul’ for the null device, and some others that I can’t recall anymore.

Linux has some similar mechanisms but they are in a fixed location on the file system, i.e. /dev/null. Linux actually takes the entire concept of ‘everything is a file’ to an almost absurd level. You can treat your sound device as a file, and even your cdrom and any hard drives can be referenced as a file, and you can use that to your advantage.

I once virtualized a computer by basically copying an existing raw hard drive device using ‘dd’ through the ‘nc’ command on a local system through nc on a remote vm that had been booted from a CD-ROM ISO, and used dd on that remote to create an image of the hard drive in a vm all the way across the country. Once the dd command finished on the local, I had the tech shut down the remote vm, and then restart it. It was amazing tech at the time held together with spit, glue, and duct tape, but it worked.


36 posted on 03/17/2022 1:27:54 PM PDT by zeugma (Stop deluding yourself that America is still a free country.)
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To: zeugma
"he reason you can’t create a directory or file called ‘con’, is because that is the reserved word for the console itself. You used to be able to see this by copying a file to ‘con’ and see the contents scroll on your screen. A"

Thanks for the info. Not that i needed that folder! Now since you are in the know, where is the equiv. Linux list of canonical names as with Windows (like control.exe /name Microsoft.DeviceManager)?

50 posted on 03/17/2022 7:09:55 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save U + be baptized + follow Him!)
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