kern/114057: devfs symlink over device doesn't work

[Stef Walter]

The following reply was made to PR kern/114057; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Stef Walter <stef at memberwebs.com>
To: Remko Lodder <remko at FreeBSD.org>
Cc: freebsd-gnats-submit at FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: kern/114057: devfs symlink over device doesn't work
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 01:55:39 +0000 (UTC)

 Remko Lodder wrote:
 > (i am unfamiliar with devfs): Isn't this somethign that devfs
 > maintains? 
 
 In the case of the main system, yes. But when you're working with jails
 or other 'secondary' devfs mounts it's often necessary to 'redirect'
 certain devices to things elsewhere via symlink.
 
 Another example might be symlinking a device to /dev/null, which this
 patch enables.
 
 > In my opinion
 > now that we have devfs, that should manage everything in /dev
 > and if you want to do something fancy with that, it falls outside
 > of regular configurations and thus might or might not work.
 
 Yes, that's generally true. However the devfs rules and symlink support
 is there for cases where you need to customize the location and/or
 presence of devices. This patch just makes it work as expected.
 
 Cheers,
 Stef Walter