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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!europa.asd.contel.com!darwin.sura.net!spool.mu.edu!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!uknet!yorkohm!minster!forsyth From: forsyth@minster.york.ac.uk Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: configuring special files in /dev Message-ID: <717850252.7924@minster.york.ac.uk> Date: 30 Sep 92 10:50:52 GMT Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England Lines: 21 try making /dev by mounting a new file system type supplied by the kernel (cf. /proc). the file system type (VFS) provides file and directories based on the contents of the kernel device tables. (the struct dirent entries are generated on-the-fly in response to readdir requests. lookup needn't generate names: it can simply search for the given names in a device table.) it works very well. i do something like this in my own o/s for the sun3 and 386 (not available, sorry), using a file system interface similar in principle to VFS/Vnode, but simpler. my file system type doesn't allow new files, directories, or symlinks to be created, but it could. configuration scripts can then be run by having /etc/rc (or equiv.) invoke /bin/test -c /dev/something && sh /etc/devinit/something something like this is necessary to chown and chmod devices initially (if the default settings aren't acceptable), since /dev is no longer persistent across boots. this approach does have the advantage that discless booting and operation is trivial. it certainly avoids the wretched snode/vnode/realvp aliasing hacks in SunOS!