Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 17:56:09 -0500 (EST)
From: "Michael B. Trausch" <fd0man@crosswinds.net>
To: William Knop <w_knop@hotmail.com>
cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Modules and DevFS
In-Reply-To: <F204tAEHLB8TrBHxvZ900001de6@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0101311746540.3842-100000@fd0man.accesstoledo.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org

On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, William Knop wrote:
>
> >One thing that I've noticed with devfs is that all the old-style names are
> >symlinks.
> 
> Hmm... I have no symlinks until the module loads. Therefore X sees no 
> /dev/input/mouse, doesn't ask the kernel for it, the kernel doesn't load the 
> module, and DevFS doesn't add the /dev entry. There's got to be an easy way 
> around this. Perhaps it has already been implimented, but I haven't been 
> able to get anything to work well (manual loading for me).
> 

As I understand it, devfsd, the daemon that you should have installed and
use with devfs (at least until all old-style device names are gone), is
what puts the compatability symlinks in there.  DevFS, if you tell it to
mount at kernel boot, (which you should), provides the actual device
inodes, for example:  /dev/tts/*, /dev/pty/*, /dev/vc/*, etc.

DevFSd provides symlinks as follows:

	/dev/ttyS0 = /dev/tts/0
	/dev/tty0 = /dev/vc/0
	/dev/pty* = /dev/pty/*

Until programs use the new names (e.g., init should tell getty to use
/dev/vc/0 instead of /dev/tty0), and everything on the system doesn't need
support for the old-style names, you need to use devfsd and
such.

I can't say that other than naming things and installing the daemon, I've
nto had any problems with modules and whatnot.  Maybe you'll be forced to
a solution that Documentation/filesystems/devfs/README presents for those
who need a device there - You may have to create a device inode manually
via a startup script at bootup... You should read that file for more
details.

	- Mike

===========================================================================
Michael B. Trausch                                    fd0man@crosswinds.net
Avid Linux User since April, '96!                           AIM:  ML100Smkr

              Contactable via IRC (DALNet) or AIM as ML100Smkr
===========================================================================

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