Okay, so I'm pretty new to Linux, and using Gentoo because I got fed up with the lack of PPC binaries, and decided that Portage was a pretty cool solution.

Anyways, I've used Ubuntu and RHEL previously and before, the /dev/ directory has usually been pretty tidy; consisting of a handful of devices. My /dev/ directory on a fresh install of Gentoo 2005.1 has some 100 directories by the look of it, many for devices I don't have and haven't compiled support for (ie: radio1, radio3, radioab, radioetc...) and a few dozen PTYs.

Any idea why this is happening? I'm assuming it has something to do with udev, although I'll admit that I know bugger-all about udev or devfs or what they even do.

Any help is well appreciated.
Cheers

I wouldn't worry too much. None of these devices take up any disk space, and it is generally nicer to have the device there if you need it rather than sorting out how to create it if it isn't there. BTW udev and devfs cannot be used together. So which are you using? If it is a new install then probably udev, as devfs is deprecated.

If you are still concerned then I suggest you have a gander at the gentoo udev guide (in the documentation listing page) or read about udev on the wiki. Especially pay attention on using a strait udev system rather than using the device tarball (which sort of negates the purpose of udev...)

Aye, I'm on udev (new install, plus specifying "nodevfs udev" as kernel arguments), and while I'm not worried about disk space, I did like that Ubuntu and RHEL made it easy to see if a device was connected through a quick glance at /dev/, but while trying to truobleshoot a SATA drive (whole other issue there), /dev/ is reporting four serial devices, but only one of them is a block and the other three are... console devices? Bit of a pain.

I've skimmed the udev guide at lunch, but once I get off work I'm going to give it a thorough reading. If Gentoo hasn't taught me anything else, it's to read the bloody manual. Twice.

Thanks for the help though!

Ah perfect! The RC_TARBALL option was exactly what I was looking for. I'd missed that the first time through. Now, I'm recompiling the kernel to limit PTY devices to 16 (do I actually need these?) and seeing if I can similarly limit TTY devices.

Cheers

PTY's are virtual consoles. IE: you have X started up, and you open a session in Eterm, Aterm or Konsole. Each one of those sessions requires a pty.