Lesson plan

Devfsd

devfsd is a device manager for the Linux kernel. Primarily, it creates device nodes in the directory when kernel drivers make the underlying hardware accessible. The nodes exist in a virtual device file system named devfs. In systems that support many different types of hardware, each of which has its own device nodes, this is more convenient than creating all possible device nodes beforehand and in a real filesystem. While devfs was a step forward, it had several disadvantages of its own. Since version 2.5 of the Linux kernel, devfs has been succeeded by udev and devtmpfs.

Back to article

Article summary

devfsd is a device manager for the Linux kernel. Primarily, it creates device nodes in the directory when kernel drivers make the underlying hardware accessible. The nodes exist in a virtual device file system named devfs. In systems that support many different types of hardware, each of which has its own device nodes, this is more convenient than creating all possible device nodes beforehand and in a real filesystem. While devfs was a step forward, it had several disadvantages of its own. Since version 2.5 of the Linux kernel, devfs has been succeeded by udev and devtmpfs.

Key claims

No claims recorded.

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

No sources recorded.

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.