devfsd

devfsd

Developer(s)	Richard Gooch[disambiguation needed ]
Operating system	Linux kernel
Type	daemon
Website	[http://freshmeat.net/projects/devfsd

	Linux portal
	Free software portal

devfsd is a device manager for the Linux kernel. Primarily, it creates device nodes in the /dev directory when kernel drivers make the underlying hardware accessible^[1]. 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^[2]. Since Linux version 2.5 devfs has been succeeded by udev.

References

1. ^ Richard Gooch (20 August 2002). "Linux Devfs (Device File System) FAQ." (Plain text). http://www.safe-mbox.com/~rgooch/linux/docs/devfs.html. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
2. ^ Greg Kroah-Hartman. "udev and devfs - The final word" (Plain text). http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev_vs_devfs. Retrieved 2011-06-21.