Re: [PATCH] Driver Core: devtmpfs - kernel-maintained tmpfs-based /dev

[Robert Schwebel <r.schwebel@pengutronix.de>]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 10:25:40AM +0200, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 23:33 +0200, Robert Schwebel wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 05, 2009 at 10:15:13AM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> > > Here's the devtmpfs patch again.
> > 
> > As an embedded distro maintainer, I'd really like such an approach. With
> > ptxdist, we can today build the complete rootfs for an embedded system
> > without root permissions - just if we want to nfs-root boot the boards
> > during development, it doesn't work, because you have to create
> > /dev/console, /dev/null and /dev/zero and that works only for root.
> 
> Have you tried genext2fs ? It lets you create a filesystem image
> complete with device nodes as a normal user.

Creating images is no problem, we use fakeroot to create all kinds of
images (JFFS2, ext2, ext3 etc). But during development, embedded people
often boot their boards with tftpboot/nfsroot in order to do quick
development cycles without re-flashing the hardware, and creating
devicenodes on nfs-exported filesystems doesn't work without root
access.

Since udev, the whole system works almost without pre-created device
nodes, but for console, null and zero there is no real alternative. We
use sudo right now when they are created, but that's a rather uggly
solution.

rsc
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