webcamd and device numbering

[Da Rock]

On 02/19/12 13:16, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>>  From owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org  Sat Feb 18 20:42:50 2012
>> Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:32:42 +1000
>> From: Da Rock<freebsd-questions at herveybayaustralia.com.au>
>> To: FreeBSD Questions<freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
>> Subject: webcamd and device numbering
>>
>> I've been struggling with this on my own for ages now, and I was
>> determined to try and sort it myself. But I'll now eat my humble pie and
>> ask for some help :)
>>
>> I have (I believe I have mentioned this before) 5 dvb tuners in a
>> FreeBSD server (8.2): 1 cx88, 2 DiVico dual tuners (that totals 4
>> amongst just the DiVico's). I'm using webcamd to use these (thank God I
>> can get away from Linux!), and they work fine except I have to run ln -s
>> to link them to the right places after every reboot (Only the Divico's
>> use webcamd). So they should look like this:
>>
>> $ls /dev/dvb/
>> adapter0    adapter1    adapter2    adapter3
>>
>> instead:
>>
>> ls /dev/dvb/
>> adapter0    adapter16    adapter24    adapter8
>>
> At least a couple of ways to approach  this.
>   1) (a bad idea, but simple)  wrap 'webcamd' in a script that makes the
>      symlinks before invoking the actual executable.
I don't think that will work because webcamd does the actually device 
attach itself. Putting in the symlinks first _cant_ happen because there 
is nothing to link to.
>   2) look at devd.conf(5) and add stuff there to create the links for {1,2,3}
Again, same problem. webcamd does the work there to attach the devices - 
but it uses hal to notify and obtain the numbering. I haven't found a 
way to turn this off as yet. Originally I don't think it used hal at 
all, somewhere along the line they decided to make inextricable.

I may be stuck with the cron job :/ I wonder if I can get it to just 
happen at boot... my spidey senses are tingling. I'll have to remember 
where I saw that.