Was attempting to upgrade to 2.6.13 w/udev. System was claiming devfs and udev support unavailable on the system, but udev should have worked (followed udev document, etc.) Turns out my root filesystem (probably as a result of imaging/upgrading the system) had a file /dev/.devfsd on it. When prompted for root password to perform maintenance, remounted root & removed file, rebooted successfully. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. touch /dev/.devfsd 2. reboot You will now be using devfs or will get the error, depending on if you were pure udev before. Expected Results: I would have expected emerging udev to identify this issue, or devfs to remove that file on its own. Ultimately this was my fault, I think, though. Was running 2.6.12-gentoo-r6 previously, with no udev support. Currently: Portage 2.0.51.22-r3 (default-linux/x86/2005.1, gcc-3.3.5-20050130, glibc-2.3.4.20041102-r1, 2.6.13-gentoo-r3 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.13-gentoo-r3 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 2.13GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.12.0_pre9 distcc 2.16 i686-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) [disabled] dev-lang/python: 2.3.5 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.10 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.5 sys-devel/binutils: 2.15.92.0.2-r10 sys-devel/libtool: 1.4.3-r4, 1.5.16 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS=" -march=pentium3 -mcpu=pentium4 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS=" -march=pentium3 -mcpu=pentium4 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig buildpkg ccache distlocks fixpackages sandbox sfperms strict userpriv" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.cites.uiuc.edu/pub/gentoo/ http://gentoo.seren.com/gentoo http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/ http://prometheus.cs.wmich.edu/gentoo" LANG="en_US" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X aac acpi aim alsa apm arts avi bash-completion berkdb bitmap-fonts bonobo cdda cddb cdparanoia cdr crypt cups curl doc dvb dvd dvdr dvdread eds emacs emboss encode esd ethereal faad fam fbcon ffmpeg firefox flac font-server foomaticdb fortran fpx freetype gd gdbm gif gnome gnutls gpm gps graphviz gstreamer gtk gtk2 imagemagick imlib ipv6 java jbig jpeg lcms libg++ libwww mad maildir mikmod mmx motif mozilla mp3 mpeg nas ncurses nls ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pcmcia pdflib perl png python quicktime rar readline reiserfs ruby samba sdl smime snmp sockets spell sse sse2 ssl svg svga tcpd tetex threads tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts usb vcd vorbis wmf wxwindows xine xinerama xml xml2 xmms xosd xv xvid zlib video_cards_radeon userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS
that's a feature devfs mounts /dev at boot time and creates the file /dev/.devfsd
No, it's not a feature. /dev was not mounted, and devfs support is not in 2.6.13 at all, so how could it have created /dev/.devfsd? I do realize there's nothing wrong with udev in doing this, but perhaps a warning somewhere, or inclusion in the udev guide, that if udev support is not working, it may be because the file /dev/.devfsd is present on the root filesystem even though devfs may not be running at the time...
actually, i was looking through the code and it seems like it'll be easy to fix this
added fix to svn
*** Bug 118867 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
