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Devfs
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. This article has been tagged since January 2007. |
- The correct title of this article is devfs. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
devfs is an umbrella term for special-purpose file systems present on many Unix-like operating systems, used for presenting device files, an abstraction for accessing I/O and other peripherals.
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Maintaining these special files on a general-purpose file system is inconvenient, and as it needs kernel assistance anyway, the idea of a special-purpose file system that is not stored on disk arose.
| Operating System | File system's name | Standard mount-point | Author | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux >=2.4 && <2.6.18 | devfs | /dev | Richard Gooch | Implemented fully in the kernel. OBSOLETED: Users are encouraged to migrate to udev. |
| Linux >=2.6.15 | udev | /dev | Greg Kroah-Hartman, Kay Sievers and Dan Stekloff | Implemented largely in user space, device information is gathered from sysfs. Device files can be stored on a conventional general-purpose file system, or in a memory file system (tmpfs). |
| Solaris | devfs | /devices | Sun Microsystems | |
| FreeBSD >=2.0 | devfs | /dev | ? | Implemented fully in the kernel. |
| Mac OS X | devfs | /dev | ? | Implemented fully in the kernel. |
| Plan 9 | # | ? | Implemented in kernel. Can not be mounted elsewhere or unmounted. | |
| Operating System | File system's name | Standard mount-point | Author | Notes |
- Philip Streck. "devfs for Management and Administration", Linux Journal, 2002-09-24.
- Daniel Robbins (2001-10-01). Part 4: Introduction to devfs. Common threads: Advanced filesystem implementor's guide. IBM.
- Daniel Robbins (2001-10-01). Part 5: Setting up devfs. Common threads: Advanced filesystem implementor's guide. IBM.
- Daniel Robbins (2001-10-01). Part 6: Implementing devfs (using the init wrapper). Common threads: Advanced filesystem implementor's guide. IBM.
- Doug Gilbert (2001-01-22). DEVFS and SCSI.
- 3.3. Device Names in devfs. The Linux 2.4 SCSI subsystem HOWTO: Chapter 3. Names and Addresses. Linux Documentation Project.
- Device File System Guide. Gentoo Linux Documentation. Gentoo Foundation, Inc..
- Mark Ellis (2003-09-23). How to use kernel module autoloading with devfs and devfsd. Linux From Scratch Hints.
- Martial Daumas (2003-09-18). How to create a basic mk_initrd command that works nice with LFS and devfs. Linux From Scratch Hints.
- Jeroen Coumans (2003-04-19). How to setup devfs with your current LFS-configuration using devfsd. How you can use devfs from scratch.. Linux From Scratch Hints.
- Tushar Teredesai (2003-03-05). Using devfs and devfsd. Linux From Scratch Hints.
- http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/devfs.html - FAQ about Linux devfs