It is your dev settings stored in

/etc/devfsd.conf (if you use devfs)
or
/etc/udev/* (if you use udev, probably this for a fresh install)

I used to have a similar problem with dev null and with my nvidia dev 
interface, I could not start anything 3D like neverwinter nights until I 
chmod'ed it to 666. So I finally went into my devfs settings. My Gentoo 
install was installed about 3 years ago and I have not switched over to udev.

I have a recently installed Gentoo amd64 box using udev, here is a sample of 
some of my udev files.

jus at kronos /etc/udev $ grep null */*
permissions.d/50-udev.permissions:null:root:root:0666
rules.d/50-udev.rules:KERNEL=="null",           NAME="%k", MODE="0666"
scripts/cdsymlinks.sh:  local DEVLS="`ls -dl \"/dev/$2\" \"/dev/$2\"[0-9]* 
2>/dev/null`"
jus at kronos /etc/udev $                          

HTH

On Thursday 15 September 2005 11:32 pm, Brock Noland wrote:
> I have setup at least 30 gentoo installs and I have never seen that
> before......
>
> brock at www brock $ ls -l /dev/null
> crw-rw-rw-  1 root root 1, 3 Dec 31  1969 /dev/null
> brock at www brock $ groups
> users wheel apache
> brock at www brock $ echo hello > /dev/null
>
> Brock
>
> On 9/15/05, Isaac Atilano <aristophrenic at warpmail.net> wrote:
> > It may be related to your groups.
> > I run Gentoo and my user id is in the following groups: tty wheel floppy
> > audio cdrom video games cdrw usb users. I can use /dev/null even though
> > the owner of it is root:root.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > http://www.fastmail.fm - I mean, what is it about a decent email service?
> >
> > ----- Original message -----
> > From: bradyh at bitstream.net
> > To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> > Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 17:15:42 -0500 (CDT)
> > Subject: [tclug-list] Gentoo Problems
> >
> > Just setup a new gentoo box and I'm running into permission problems.  I
> > get an error when I log in as a regular user saying that I don't have
> > permission to access /dev/null.  When I check.../dev/null is chmod 600.
> > I
> > can get rid of that error by chmodding it to 666 but it changes back any
> > time I reboot.
> >
> > Also I can't run startx unless I'm either logged in as root or set my
> > user
> > to have group root.  But when I do that I can't start terminals in Gnome
> > -
> > it says "There was an error creating a child process for this terminal".
> >
> > Anybody seen this before?
> >
> > Thanks for any help,
> > Brady
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
> > tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
> > tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
>
> _______________________________________________
> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
> tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list