Re: switching to devfs

[mdevin@ozemail.com.au]

On Mon, May 28, 2001 at 12:47:30AM +0200, Raffaele Sandrini wrote:
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> Hi all,
> 
> I have an 2.4 kernel installed but with the old fashioned /dev-node system. 
> What is the easiest way to enable and ONLY USE the new DEVFS?

Take a look at the documentation that comes with the kernel-source
package you compiled your kernel from.  I haven't access to my home
computer now so I can't tell you the exact name of the file but I
think it was /usr/src/kernel-source-2.4.x/Documentation/Changes.txt
Have a read.  It talks about migrating over to devfs.

But in summary, what I did was:
1. compile a kernel with devfs support and also check the option where
it automatically mounts at boot.
2. install the devfsd package
3. install your new kernel-image
4. reboot.

5. You may need to make some changes to your /etc/fstab to reflect
some name changes with devfs.  For example I found that the device
name for my cdrom had changed from /dev/cdrom to /dev/cdroms/cdrom0
and unfortunately there was no symlink in /dev to account for this -
so change this in /etc/fstab.  If you like you could change all the
entries for each of the hard disk partitions also - but there should
be symlinks for these.  eg: /dev/hda1 -->
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1.  You can check out what they
are called by perusing the /dev directory.

Also, another thing that you should remember, the entries in /dev are
created on the fly when the device is accessed.  So when you do a ls
-al /dev you may not see the device /dev/cdroms/cdrom0 for example.
But if you try to mount it then the device node will be created and
you will see it then.  Also if you do a specific ls -al
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 then the device will be created too and you will
see it.

Hth.
Mark.