a while back i reported an issue where /dev/null was getting set to 600 perms after a system update. i finally figured out what it is. i don't care about failed logins and have limited space on some servers, so i symlinked /var/log/btmp to /dev/null. the initscripts package does a chmod 600 /var/log/btmp, so voila /dev/null gets changed. so now i know why it happened just to me. i now need to figure out a better way to deal with btmp. any ideas from the list?