1 HOWTO use udev to manage /dev
3 This document describes one way to get udev working on a Fedora-development
4 machine to manage /dev. This procedure may be used to get udev to manage
5 /dev on other distros, if you modify some of the steps.
7 This will only work if you use a 2.6 based kernel, preferably the most
8 recent one. This does not prevent your machine from using a 2.4
9 kernel, if you boot into one, udev will not run and your old /dev will
10 be present with no changes needed.
13 NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE
14 This is completely unsupported. Attempting to do this may cause your
15 machine to be unable to boot properly. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. Always
16 have a rescue disk or CD handy to allow you to fix up any errors that
18 NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE
21 - Build and install udev as specified in the README that comes with
22 udev. I recommend using the following build options to get the
23 smallest possible binaries:
24 make USE_KLIBC=true USE_LOG=false DEBUG=false
26 - disable udev from the boot process by running:
32 - place the start_udev script somewhere that is accessible by your
33 initscripts. I placed it into /etc/rc.d with the following command:
34 copy extras/start_udev /etc/rc.d/
36 - modify the rc.sysinit script to call the start_udev script as one of
37 the first things that it does, but after /proc and /sys are mounted.
38 I did this with the latest Fedora startup scripts with the patch at
41 - make sure the /etc/udev/udev.conf file lists the udev_root as "/dev/"
42 and the udev_db as "/dev/.udev.tdb". It should contain the
43 following lines in order to work properly.
45 udev_db="/dev/.udev.tdb"
47 - reboot into a 2.6 kernel and watch udev create all of the initial
51 If anyone has any problems with this, please let me, and the
52 linux-hotplug-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list know.
54 A big thanks go out to the Gentoo developers for showing me that this is
61 ----------------------------------
62 Patch to modify rc.sysinit to call udev at the beginning of the boot
66 --- /etc/rc.sysinit.orig 2004-02-17 11:45:17.000000000 -0800
67 +++ /etc/rc.sysinit 2004-02-17 13:28:33.000000000 -0800
70 . /etc/init.d/functions
72 +# start udev to populate /dev
75 if [ "$HOSTTYPE" != "s390" -a "$HOSTTYPE" != "s390x" ]; then
77 for i in `LC_ALL=C grep '^[0-9].*respawn:/sbin/mingetty' /etc/inittab | sed 's/^.* tty\([0-9][0-9]*\).*/\1/g'`; do