How to re-create /dev/xxx ?
 

I have installed 10.1 and upgraded to kernel 2.6.13. I configured all the options from scratch, mostly as a learning exercise, but also as the menu structure was different. All is well and good and everything so far seems to be stable. However, I have one issue that I can not seem to find an answer for; how do I create missing hardware nodes, i.e. I have lost /dev/dsp, /dev/mixer etc. These are no longer present, so I can only assume this is related to the re-compile. I have re-compiled the latest alsa drivers with no change, and I have no knowledge of udev or devfs.

Can anyone give me some pointers here please?

Cheers,

snickwad.

If you are using udev then the only entries that exist in /dev should be the ones on your system that have been identified. If they aren't there then it means you haven't compiled them or you have compiled them as modules and not loaded them yet.

if your not using udev you can recreate devices with "mknod"

mknod /dev/dsp c 14 3

man mknod

check the devices.txt for major minor numbers its in /usr/src/linux if you have kernel source installed or just google devices.txt.

like the above poster said udev will recreate those nodes once you load the modules.

If you don't want to use udev, such as myself, do a chmod -x /etc/rc.d/rc.udev otherwise you will have to recreate your device every time you boot.

Also, if you don't know your device's MAJOR or whether it is block, char etc..
cat /proc/devices

Thanks for that. I knew of mknod but was unsure of the parameters, so now I know that. How do I know if I am using udev? I would have thought (if my understanding is correct) that it would have created them, as the appropriate modules are showing as loaded with lsmod, and I assumed it had been responsible for not creating them (hence why they are missing) as I had missed the appropriate drivers during the re-compile. Does udev rely on another kernel option that I might have missed?

Thanks again,

snickwad

Got it sussed.

Restarted earlier today, and udev ran on startup. This apparently was not happening after a reboot. Strangely, it continues to not start at random times, and issuing udevstart restores all the nodes. I will be looking at this, but thanks for the info.

snickwad.