On Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 12:45:00PM +0900, Georgi Georgiev wrote: > maillog: 02/12/2005-02:47:55(+0000): Stephen Bennett types > > On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 03:35:23 +0100 > > Matthias Langer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > revealed that there are in fact hundrets of premade device nodes in > > > the /dev directory. And this is not only true for the box where i > > > discovered this, which was brought up from a 2004.x cd, but also true > > > for the box where i just installed gentoo from 2005.1-r1. > > > > > > Is there any reason for this ? > > > > Not all systems use udev or devfs. Plus, it's nice to be able to boot > > the system when your dynamic /dev management fails for whatever reason. > > I don't need a fully populated /dev to get a working shell with > init=/bin/bash on the kernel cmdline. And at that point it is easy to > run /dev/MAKEDEV and get whatever devices are needed for > troubleshooting. > > I of course assume that if the dynamic /dev management fails, then we > need to *recover* instead of trying to get the system up as usual. And I > also assume that the init scripts will anyway tell me "fatal error: give > root password for maintenance or Ctrl-D to continue" if I have something > vital missing from /dev.
If udev fails, and you have a completly empty /dev, you will not get any console output at all for this type of message to be shown :( So it's better to be safe than sorry. That being said, my boxes have an empty /dev... thanks, greg k-h -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
