Improved Device Configuration (devfsadm)

This functionality is updated in the Solaris 7 11/99 software release.

The devfsadm command provides an improved mechanism for managing the special device files in the /dev and /devices directories, including support for dynamic reconfiguration events.

In previous Solaris releases, device configuration was handled by drvconfig, which managed the physical device entries in the /devices directory, and five link generators, devlinks, disks, tapes, ports, and audlinks, which managed the logical device entries in the /dev directory.

These utilities were not aware of hot-pluggable devices nor were they flexible enough for devices with multiple instances. For compatibility purposes, drvconfig and the other link generators are symbolic links to the devfsadm utility. See System Administration Guide, Volume I for information about hot-pluggable devices.

Both reconfiguration boot processing and updating the /dev and /devices directories in response to dynamic reconfiguration events is handled by devfsadmd, the daemon version of the devfsadm command. This daemon is started from the /etc/rc* scripts when a system is booted.

Since devfsadmd automatically detects device configuration changes generated by any reconfiguration event, there is no need to run this command interactively.

See the man page devfsadm(1M) for more information.