Re: [gentoo-dev] contents of /dev after initial installation

[Greg KH <gregkh@gentoo.org>]

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 <mlangc@gmx.at> 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
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