Name: devfs Version: 199.17 Kernelver: 2.4.20-pre11 Status: 8 Author: Richard Gooch Description: Device File System Date: 15-OCT-2002 Descfile-URL: ftp://ftp.atnf.csiro.au/pub/people/rgooch/linux/kernel-patches/v2.4/devfs.desc Download-URL: ftp://ftp.atnf.csiro.au/pub/people/rgooch/linux/kernel-patches/v2.4/devfs-patch-current.gz Homepage-URL: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/kernel-patches.html Manual-URL: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/devfs.html Note that devfs has appeared in the official 2.3.46 kernel. The devfs patches now contain improvements and fixes to what is in the kernel. Devfs is an alternative to "real" character and block special devices on your root filesystem. Kernel device drivers can register devices by name rather than major and minor numbers. These devices will appear in the devfs automatically, with whatever default ownership and protection the driver specified. NOTE that devfs is entirely optional. If you prefer the old disc-based device nodes, then simply leave CONFIG_DEVFS_FS=n (the default). In this case, nothing will change. There are two aspects to devfs: one is the underlying device namespace, which is a namespace just like any mounted filesystem. The other aspect is the filesystem code which provides a view of the device namespace. Because the devfs namespace exists without mounting devfs, you can easily mount the root filesystem by referring to an entry in the devfs namespace.