I have just completed a P2V migration over to VMware 4.1 platform. After the migration the VM was booted. Once logged in, there were numerous /dev/ devices that were not created. Like, /dev/pts directory, /dev/loopx (loop devices), /dev/shm, an d others. If I manually create those directories, after a reboot all the devices that I created are gone. I am trying to troubleshoot what is the process, during the boot process, that is in charge of discovering the devices and creating the device files under /dev. Let me describe the effects of not having these files created.

1. Without the /dev/pts directory, when you attempt to ssh into this server from a remote machine, you are prompted for password, then you enter the password, then the process hangs. Once I create the /dev/pts directory, and then mount it as devpts, remote user can ssh into the server. Once you reboot the server, the /dev/pts directory is gone again.

2. Without the /dev/loopx devices, when I attempt to create a new initrd file using mkinitrd command it fails because there is no loop devices available.

Any help in trying to troubleshoot this problem I sure would appreciate it.

Also, I cannot upgrade to a newer version at this time.

Thank you

Rick

I thinks it's udev that handles making all the device nodes under /dev directory

so you are aware that there has been NO new software or security patches for fedora 2 since April 2005

you will not even be able to use firefox 3
you are stuck with ff1

as to the devices not being made
that might be a VMware issue
or a fedora 2
(There were many many MANY problems in 1,2 )
SELinux was included in fedora 2

or a new hardware issue
fedora 2 is very OLD
Is the hardware from 2000 to 2004 ?

Thank you for your reply. This version of Linux is a little old for udev. Meaning, udev is not installed and is not controlling the device creation during the boot process.

thank you

Rick

John, thank you for your reply. As I mentioned, I cannot upgrade this server at this time. I know that this version of Linux is old, but it will still work in a VMware environment. One test that I did yesterday, was that I found a iso of Fedora Core 2 on the web, it was hard to find, and I did a fresh installation onto a VMware virtual machine. After it was installed, everything was working just fine. It had all the devices in /dev/ create correctly. The /dev/pts, the /dev/shm, and the /dev/loopx files and directories where all there. So I know that it works fine on VMware. I also created another VM in VMware and assigned the vmdk files from the conversion to this new machine hoping that it might be a VMware configuration issue. Wrong, it still did not create all the /dev devices. So, something within Linux is not creating the /dev/ devices as it should. I am looking for suggestions as to how I might troubleshoot this problem. This is the reason for me asking if anyone knows the boot process of this version of the OS to give me some guidance as to where to look for the possible problem.

Thank you again.

Rick

about the only thing i can think of is ask over at fedoraforum on the End Of Life section
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forumdisplay.php?f=75

or on the fedora mailing list
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate#Mailing_Lists