The devfs file system described in the devfs(7FS) man page is used by the Solaris system to manage /devices. Each element in this namespace represents the physical path to a hardware device, pseudo-device, or nexus device. The namespace is a reflection of the device tree. As such, the file system is populated by a hierarchy of directories and device special files.
The /dev file hierarchy, which is today part of the / (root) file system, consists of symbolic links, or logical paths, to the physical paths present in /devices. Applications reference the logical path to a device presented in /dev. The /dev file system is loopback-mounted into the zone using a read-only mount.
The /dev file hierarchy is managed by a system comprised of the components in the following list:
devfsadm (see the devfsadm(1M) man page)
syseventd (see the syseventd(1M) man page)
libdevinfo device information library (see the libdevinfo(3LIB) man page)
devinfo driver (see the devinfo(7D) man page)
Reconfiguration Coordination Manager (RCM) (see Reconfiguration Coordination Manager (RCM) Script Overview in System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems)
Subsystems that rely on /devices path names are not able to run in non-global zones until /dev path names are established.