From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Oct 5 18:41:32 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2A11016A4B3 for ; Sun, 5 Oct 2003 18:41:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ecsd.com (ecsd.com [209.133.53.11]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A757E43FE0 for ; Sun, 5 Oct 2003 18:41:31 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ecsd@ecsd.com) Received: from ecsd.com (ecsd.transbay.net [209.133.53.31]) by ecsd.com (8.11.6p2/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h961ojn75866 for ; Sun, 5 Oct 2003 18:50:45 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <3F80C87F.6080201@ecsd.com> Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2003 18:42:23 -0700 From: ecsd User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20031003 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: questions@FreeBSD.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: scant description for devfs - unable to create /dev/ad3* or use disklabel X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2003 01:41:32 -0000 The transition to using devfs versus MAKEDEV is not very well documented, and I find no way to create /dev/ad3-anything although I have a /dev/ad3 and have used "disklabel -w -r ad3 auto" to initialize it. I wish there were an example section for devfs(8) that showed how to use devfs to do what MAKEDEV used to do. I have seen the remark "devfs will create the node for you", but "disklabel -e /dev/ad3d" and "disklabel -e /dev/ad3s1d" fail "no such device" whereas "disklabel -e /dev/ad3" reports "operation not supported by device". Perhaps I could use mknod, but I don't know what minor numbers to use and doing "file ad*" doesn't show a clear pattern of assignment. I wish MAKEDEV were not removed, as it is an easy, well-known interface to creating device nodes - as opposed to the opaque devfs, inasmuch as, if I had MAKEDEV I would be done by now whereas there is nothing in the FAQs, nothing in the search, and nothing in the release notes that describes the devfs replacement for this common operation. Now I am left guessing whether I'll have to reboot the system to see the partitions on /dev/ad3. MAKEDEV would just work with no fuss. -ecsd