makedev.d(5) Linux System Administrator's Manual makedev.d(5)NAME
makedev.d - configuration files for devices creation through makedevDESCRIPTION
The behavior of makedev is instrumented by the configuration files in
/etc/makedev.d/ directory. They're read and "executed" by makedev(8) on
post installation of the MAKEDEV package.
These configuration file consists of a set of lines.
All empty lines, and all text on a line after a '#', will be ignored.
The remaining lines should all conform to one of the following formats:
SYNTAX
This is a description of the four basic legal directives.
=NAME expanded text
this define a macro. eg: =BURNER 660 root cdwriter will make
makedev expand $BURNER when encountered.
b mask owner group major minor minor_step dev_number root_name base
this directive define some block (``b'') device(s) creation.
They will be owned by owner and group and will have the major
and minor as major and minor numbers.
The dev_number arguments define how many devices will be cre‐
ated. If dev_number is different from 1, then dev_number devices
will be created, their minor number being incremented by
minor_step at each step.
If only one device is created, it will be named root_name.
Else, the devices will be named with regards to the following
rules :
· If root_name does not contains ``%d'', then ```%d'' is
appended to its end.
· If base is not set, it is initialized to zero.
· Then, at each step, the name of the device we have to
created is obtained by incrementing base and replacing
``%d'' by base. This is equivament to these statements :
$base++; $file = sprintf($name, $base);
c mask owner group major minor minor_step dev_number root_name base
is quite the same directive as the previous one, exept its pur‐
pose is character devices (``c'') creation.
l destination source
will make makdev symlink source on destination.
CUSTOMIZATION
Since there is currently no standardization in what names are used for
system users and groups, it is possible that you may need to modify
makedev's configuration files to reflect your site's settings.
EXAMPLES
# /etc/makedev.d/test sample
#
# the following line create (```c'') the famous /dev/null entry
# with 666 mask (file access permissions), with 1 as major and
# 3 as minor
c 666 root root 1 3 1 1 null
# the following line define the STORAGE macro that specify a 660
# mask for file permissions, root as owner and disk as group
=STORAGE 660 root disk
# the following line create 16 /dev/hdaX entries (/dev/hda0 to
# /dev/hda15) with the permissions and ownership defined above,
# and with 22 as major
b $STORAGE 22 0 1 16 hda%d
# this one link /dev/snd on alsa entry in procfs
# (usually mounted in /proc)
l snd ../proc/asound/dev
NOTES
The name of the file may contain some ``/'' characters : makdev will
create the necessary directories if the node to create must be in a sub
directory.
Comments must begin on first line character.
Files are parsed one by one, after having been sorted by name in alpha‐
betical order.
FILES
The /etc/makedev.d/* files contains instructions that instrument makdev
to create the device files in /dev. Especially,
/etc/makedev.d/00macros define most frequently used macros.
SEE ALSO
Linux Allocated Devices, maintained by H. Peter Anvin,
<Peter.Anvin@linux.org>.
It is ususally found in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/devices.txt if
kernel-source package is installed or in /usr/share/doc/kernel-
doc-<VERSION>/devices.txt if kernel-doc package is installed. <VERSION>
is the version number of the installed kernel (eg: 2.4.19).
makedev(8)AUTHOR
Thierry Vignaud <tvignaud@mandrakesoft.com>, 2002
The device database is heavily inspirated by Redhat one.
Mandrake Linux 1 November 2002 makedev.d(5)
