conf/120431: devfs.rules are not initialized under certain (default) circumstances

[Fabian Thorns]

>Number:         120431
>Category:       conf
>Synopsis:       devfs.rules are not initialized under certain (default) circumstances
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Feb 08 22:30:01 UTC 2008
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Fabian Thorns
>Release:        6.2, 6.3 and 7.0-RC1
>Organization:
>Environment:
FreeBSD jailhost 7.0-RC1 FreeBSD 7.0-RC1 #0: Mon Dec 24 12:18:24 UTC 2007     root at logan.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
>Description:
Hi there,

i just tried to set up some jails under FreeBSD 6.3 and 7.0-RC1 and was unable to assign a devfs-ruleset to a manually mounted devfs:

# mount -t devfs devfs /jails/jail01/dev
# devfs -m /jails/jail01/dev rule -s 4 applyset
devfs rule: ioctl DEVFSIO_SAPPLY: No such process

This is caused by the problem that rulesets from neither /etc/defaults/devfs.rules nor /etc/devfs.rules are available by default:

# grep rules_jail /etc/defaults/devfs.rules
[devfsrules_jail=4]
# devfs rule showsets
#

However, the rules are available after launching jails through /etc/rc.d/jail.

After looking around in the rc.d-scripts i found that the rulesets listed in devfs.rules-files in rc.conf are initialized by the rc.subr method devfs_init_rulesets which is run by /etc/rc.d/jail. I would expect this function being lunched from /etc/rc.d/devfs at the system startup too, but this only happens when either devfs_system_ruleset or devfs_set_rulesets is set in rc.conf. This is not the default-case and is likely to be left unchanged when not using devfs-rules at startup-time. This might be common for the hostsystem, but in a jailed environment these rules are definitely needed and should be useably right away, especially for setting up and testing jails before starting them with rc.d/jail.

>How-To-Repeat:
see above.
>Fix:
To make the rules available i modified /etc/rc.d/dev changing line 19 from

        if [ -n "$devfs_system_ruleset" -o -n "$devfs_set_rulesets" ]; then

to 

        if [ -n "$devfs_system_ruleset" -o -n "$devfs_set_rulesets" -o -n "$devfs_rulesets" ]; then

. Afterwards all rules are initialized as soon as a ruleset is specified using devfs_rulesets in rc.conf which is the default for dev.rules in both /etc/ and /etc/default. The appliance of the rules is conditioned later in /etc/rc.d/devfs and is therefore not affected by this change. After launching /etc/rc.d/devfs restart all rules are available and applicable at any time.

Regards,

Fabian

Patch attached with submission follows:

--- /etc/rc.d/devfs.org	Fri Feb  8 23:06:13 2008
+++ /etc/rc.d/devfs	Fri Feb  8 23:06:31 2008
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
 
 devfs_start()
 {
-	if [ -n "$devfs_system_ruleset" -o -n "$devfs_set_rulesets" ]; then
+	if [ -n "$devfs_system_ruleset" -o -n "$devfs_set_rulesets" -o -n "$devfs_rulesets" ]; then
 		devfs_init_rulesets
 		if [ -n "$devfs_system_ruleset" ]; then
 			devfs_set_ruleset $devfs_system_ruleset /dev


>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: