[SLUG] Permission problems on linode (Ubuntu 5.10)

[Mary Gardiner <mary-slug@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Asking here because I know some other people use Linode. (For people who
don't know, a Linode is a UML image provided by linode.com. One
important thing to note is that using a Linode means I am using a kernel
build of theirs, not a distro provided kernel. Nor do I have opportunity
to build my own.)

I have a Linode running Ubuntu 5.10, which I upgraded from their Ubuntu
4.10 image (via Hoary/5.04). It has ubuntu-minimal and ubuntu-standard
installed, so udev is installed as a dependency.

The other day I changed from using a 2.4 kernel to their 2.6 kernel:

# uname -a
Linux [hostname] 2.6.15-linode16 #1 Wed Jan 4 17:30:25 EST 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

Since this upgrade, I am not getting the correct permissions on some
/dev nodes, in particular:

# ls -l /dev/null
crw-rw----  1 root root 1, 3 2006-04-30 11:54 /dev/null

This is causing a fair number of problems on my system: many processes
expect to be able to redirect or write to /dev/null. I understand udev
is meant to take care of making the device nodes for me and setting the
correct permissions, what do I need to change about it?

-Mary