Public SourceMage Discussion List

["Eric Sandall" <eric AT sandall.us>]

The Well-Beloved Bard said:
> Careful, Andrew - no need to flame someone who's trying to share knowledge
> here.  I know devfsd makes the links for you.  However, I have run into a
> problem with devfsd that I thought other people might want to be aware of
> so that it wouldn't bite them like it did me.
>
> Devfsd _only_ creates links for the devices it knows about.  So, if it
> doesn't know about the device, it can't make a link.  If the SCSI driver
> is compiled into the kernel, it's not loaded when devfsd creates its
> links.  Since it's not loaded, /dev/sdAX aren't populated, so devfsd
> doesn't do anything with it.  Because devfs is mounting on /dev, it
> "hides" the /dev/sdAX entries, so when you get to the kernel (that has the
> driver statically compiled in), the driver tries to assign /dev/sdAX
> values to the drives connected to the SCSI adapter, but can't, because
> those special block devices are "hidden" by the mount, and aren't visible
> to the driver.
>
> This is not a big deal, as long as you don't compile the SCSI controller
> driver statically.  If you do have the SCSI controller drivers compiled
> in statically, and mount devfs at /dev, however, you don't get to
> access your drives because IT CAN'T MAKE THE LINKS!  I thought that
> since it makes your drives inaccessible until you recompile the driver as
> a module, that I would save people having to bang their heads against a
> wall I'd already found the door to.
>
> --steve--
> who remembers when informative messages to the SM lists were welcomed
> instead of flamed...

And they still are.  I appreciate people whom post their problems to the
list, especially when it has bearing on our discussion and can save others
from coming across the same problem.  I think Andrew may have just
misinterpreted what you were saying (my opinion of his opinion, we all
know how much salt that hold. ;)).

-sandalle

-- 
PGP Key Fingerprint:  FCFF 26A1 BE21 08F4 BB91  FAED 1D7B 7D74 A8EF DD61
http://search.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xA8EFDD61

Eric Sandall                     |  Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer
eric AT sandall.us                  |  http://www.sourcemage.org/
http://eric.sandall.us/          |  SysAdmin @ Inst. Shock Physics @ WSU
http://counter.li.org/  #196285  |  http://www.shock.wsu.edu/