How Devices Are Managed

The devfsadm command manages the special device files in the /dev and /devices directories. By default, the devfsadm command attempts to load every driver in the system and attach to all possible device instances. Then, devfsadm creates the device files in the /devices directory and the logical links in the /dev directory. In addition to managing the /dev and /devices directories, the devfsadm command also maintains the path_to_inst(4) instance database.

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

For more information, see devfsadm(1M).