NAME
devfs
—
device file system
SYNOPSIS
devfs /dev devfs rw 0 0
DESCRIPTION
The device file system, ordevfs
, provides access to
kernel's device namespace in the global file system namespace. The
conventional mount point is /dev.
The file system includes several directories, links, symbolic
links and devices, some of which can also be written. In a chroot'ed
environment, devfs
can be used to create a new
/dev mount point.
The mknod(8) tool can be used to recover deleted device entries
under devfs
.
The
fdescfs(5) filesystem is an alternate means for populating
/dev/fd. The character devices that both
devfs
and
fdescfs(5) present in /dev/fd correspond to
the open file descriptors of the process accessing the directory.
devfs
only creates files for the standard file
descriptors 0, 1 and
2.
fdescfs(5) creates files for all open descriptors.
The options are as follows:
-o
options- Use the specified mount options, as described in
mount(8). The following devfs file system-specific options are
available:
ruleset
=ruleset- Set ruleset number ruleset as the current ruleset for the mount-point and apply all its rules. If the ruleset number ruleset does not exist, an empty ruleset with the number ruleset is created. See devfs(8) for more information on working with devfs rulesets.
FILES
- /dev
- The normal
devfs
mount point.
EXAMPLES
To mount a devfs
volume located on
/mychroot/dev:
mount -t devfs devfs
/mychroot/dev
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The devfs
file system first appeared in
FreeBSD 2.0. It became the preferred method for
accessing devices in FreeBSD 5.0 and the only method
in FreeBSD 6.0. The devfs
manual page first appeared in FreeBSD 2.2.
AUTHORS
The devfs
manual page was written by
Mike Pritchard
<mpp@FreeBSD.org>.