devfs
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Re: a fundamental question

Subject: Re: a fundamental question
From: "Kevin P. Fleming" <kpfleming@xxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 19:29:46 -0700
Cc: devfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <Pine.SOL.4.43.0212171254590.4238-100000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
References: <Pine.SOL.4.43.0212171254590.4238-100000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> <20021220011128.GA1318@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Georgi Georgiev wrote:

I see there is something that obviously I had not understood for a long time,
so....

Aren't symlinks the responsibility of the devfsd daemon?

Some are, yes. Those designed to emulate older /dev entries are the responsbility of _some_ userspace application, usually devfsd.

A system with mounted /dev and NOT having devfsd running, has no
symlinks in /dev, does it? Short of stdin, stdout etc I guess.

Not at all; my main server uses devfs and does not even have devfsd installed. All the normal devfs entries are there, include /dev/discs, /dev/cdroms, etc.

Is this something I am completely confused about? I figured a long time ago, that when I am the only one with a different opinion, it is usually so, because
I am wrong. But, please, explain.

Yes, you are mistaken :-) However, if this is in reference to the recent discussion about mounting root filesystems and not having "short" /dev paths available, this is where the confusion comes from.

For some reason, the /dev _namespace_ inside the kernel is a distinct entity from the devfs _filesystem_ that normally gets mounted on /dev. All the /dev _namespace_ entries appear in the devfs filesystem, but also there are many symlinks to make things easier to use. I don't know if those symlinks are visible in the /dev namespace inside the kernel, but I think not since many people have trouble using them as arguments to the "root=" kernel parameter.


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