[gentoo-user] Re: No /dev entries in recent stage3 snapshots?

[Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com>]

On 2009-01-21, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:50:17 +0000, Nick Cunningham wrote:
>
>>> But, that doesn't really solve the problem, since after a
>>> reboot the /dev directory will be empty again and you end up
>>> with problems such as no console during startup.
>
>> IIRC thats because /dev should be populated on startup by udev
>> so i would check that udev is installed and working properly,
>> if you use openrc then this could be the cause as openrc now
>> starts udev through normal scripts i think, sometimes on
>> upgrade from baselayout 1 they may not be automatically added
>> to the right runlevels.
>
> You still need /dev/console in the dev directory of the root partition,
> along with /dev/null.

Try telling that to somebody in the Gentoo forum hiding behind
the screen name "desultory".  Sheesh.  I reported the issue to
the forum thread as requested by the article on www.gentoo.org,
and I got a very hostile reaction.  Bascially I got a snide,
insulting response, a complete denial that there was a problem
with the tarball in question, and a denial that either
/dev/console or /dev/null is needed at boot time.

That's the last time I waste my time with that forum.  I should
have known. Web forums all suck.  Web forum UIs are all
completely abominable, and they seem to be inhabited almost
exclusively by surly, unjustifiably arrogant junior-high kids
hiding behind stupid screen names and even worse avatars.

> Anything else is a waste of disk space and inodes as the
> static /dev/devices are hidden as soon as udev starts.

Yup.

> If the tarball doesn't contain /dev/console it is broken, but
> it is also broken if it contains thousands of device entries. 

-- 
Grant