Fubar /dev <-- a lot of non-existing device sh... [solved]

Cyrack · Last edited by Cyrack on Tue Oct 11, 2005 6:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hi,
I'v just installed gentoo again (after being on MS Windows for approx. 5 hours of horror!). After I installed the software my /dev looks very odd!
I have hda1 through hdh20, but I only have one PATA-device with 4 partitions. At the same time: I'v got a lot of other devices showing up, but just a few of them actually exists in my hardware (I have video1 to video63, but only one video card) and so forth.

My conf: in rc.conf I have deactivated the save dev tarball option (the problem existed before I changed that), but after the change my video-card stopped working. My Siemens Data Link cable doesn't work (I used the same kernel config as always, and the modules is loaded).

To be hornest I don't know what I have dones wrong during this install, but I'm pretty sure it is some logical error, since I can't find any articles relating to this problem.

More config info:
Kernel: 2.6.12-gentoo-r10 @ x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
Udev - version 068
No edits made to any modules conf (except the autoload)

In all other aspects my computer is performing fine, it's just the /dev and the video-card which is acting very, very oddly.
##########

If you think you know what is wrong, I will gladly post any information which can help, but right now I don't know what would help, and what would create noise :-/

Suicidal · l33t Joined: 30 Jul 2003 Posts: 959 Location: /dev/null

Try setting this on your (/etc/conf.d/rc) they might be left over from the generic dev on the install tarrball.

Cyrack · Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 6:29 pm Post subject:

I have disabled the save tarball option (eg. set to "no").

But! I have solved the problem (more or less myself (thanks goes to #gentoo :-)

)):

After the removeal of the above option I rebooted, but the devices showed up anyway. After a bit of poking around I killed udevd and removed _everything_ from the /dev; then restarted udevd, and my /dev was somewhat populated (some devices was missing, but overall a improvement). After a system restart the /dev was fully populated, and I started to poke around for my tv-card. Some how, i the /etc/modules.d/aliases the line for my card had been replaced with a line ending with the bttv-module-name (not very usefull, afterall!), so I changed that to saa7134, and now it workes!

Summary: If /dev is populated with a lot of non-existing devices, this method _might_ work:
a) Kill udevd (or whatever /dev/ manager you are using)
b) remove all nodes from /dev
c) restart udevd (...)
e) if some devices doesn't show up:
-- 1) restart
-- 2) unload/load modules related to this device might help