Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Andrew <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>]

A while back, and several other times the /dev and /devices discussion
has been brought up. I think the last time i was mentioned we decided
to migrate away from /devices.

Since no one has really volunteered a way to do this, and i've done it on
my own system for nearly a year, so Im going to write down how to do it,
and hope this catalyzes something.

To swap an existing system over you need to do three things:
change mount.sh in several ways
fix /etc/fstab
optionally install devfsd

mount.sh needs to mount devfs on /dev not /devices, thats a change to
whatever spell that file happens to come in.

fstab needs to be updated. The following should take care of it:
cat /etc/fstab|sed 's/^\/devices/\/dev/' > /tmp/fstab; mv /tmp/fstab 
/etc/fstab

I also made a symlink from /devices to /dev, however if everything gets
properly switched it wont matter.

devfsd is a great tool which handles making symlinks to the older style
devices, ie /dev/hda1 etc. There is a spell for it, it is however missing
a way to be loaded at bootup. However a simple if [ -x /sbin/devfsd ];
then /sbin/devfsd /dev; fi in mount.sh would suffice. You also dont
_have_ to run devfsd, you just dont get any of its cool features.

Assuming there arent any lingering references to /devices somewhere,
then the /devices directory or symlink can be removed.

To carry this out we ought to script the whole thing. It shouldnt be
too difficult. Also, the mount.sh script ought to change to accomidate
the changeover.


I think that the iso's ought to change over too for all new installee's.

Anyways, thoughts, comments?

Andrew