/dev symlinks disappear on reboot, kernel 2.6.7
 

Hello everyone!

I have upgraded to the new 2.6.7 kernel, and have been having problems accessing my optical drives. I have a dvd-rom drive, hdc, and a cd-rw drive, hdd. In 2.4.26 I am able to create a symlink /dev/dvd pointing to /dev/hdc to represent my dvd-rom drive, and /dev/cdrw pointing to hdd. However, I am unable to do so in 2.6.7, they are removed after I reboot. I could just use /dev/hdc and hdd to represent them in my fstab, however programs like gxine want there to be a /dev/dvd symlink. I also could create them in my init scripts, however that is quite messy. I would like to know if there is a way to disable this feature of the new kernel. It is the only problem I have been having with the 2.6.7 kernel.

PS. Using Slack 10

bump

Apparently someone else was having a similar problem. http://kerneltrap.org/comment/reply/1998/6278 . However, I believe kudzo is red hat software, I'm not sure if it comes with slackware or if it is now part of the new kernel or if it is even the problem. :confused: Some help would be greatly appreciated.

edit: Would it help if I enabled devfs and edited /etc/devfsd.conf as shown on http://vayne.fdns.net/presario.html ?

TheRepublican -- please refrain from bumping your own post unless at least 24 hours have elapsed without a reply, per the LQ Rules. Thanks -- J.W.

Progress! I found slackware uses a program called udev, similar to devfs however seemingly more advanced. I found configuration files for said program in /etc/udev. In the rules.d subdirectory, there is a file containing rules, some governing cdrom drives. Now, I need to configure udev to create the symlinks /dev/dvd and /dev/cdrw. Any help would still be appreciated, but now I have some man pages to read. :study:

Sorry JW, I was unaware of said rule, will not happen again. :(

Woot! I got it working. For anyone experiencing similar problems, you need to edit /etc/udev/rules.d/udev.rules. Comment out the line creating IDE CD dev entries and add something similar to:

depending on your setup. This is because udev is used to create dev entries dynamically at startup, so you need to edit it's configuration in order to create your symlinks. Creating them using ln in the /dev directory will work if udev is not enabled, but will not be stored if it is.

Now onto the next issue in my huge stack of problems with linux! :cry: :)

Great work TheRepublican, congrats on getting it squared away. -- J.W.