mtd devices

[Daniel Toussaint]

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Hi Jeremy,

1.) /dev/mtd/x

.. is what you get when you use devfs (device filesystem). In this case
your is configured with option CONFIG_DEVFS_FS=y.
Using devfs is generally better(and sometimes even a must) for embedded
systems - documentation about this is in
/kernelsource/Documentation/filesystems/devfs/
All device nodes are created on the fly, ONLY for devices that were
configured in the kernel and/or available on your system.
The naming scheme is a little different than the traditional one, but
make a lot more sense really.


2.) /dev/mtdx
....is a node that was created manually by someone with the command
"mknod" , and is what you see on most desktop/server linux distributions.
It's the way thing are done in unix in general. The drawback with this,
is that it takes up "real " space on your disk (or flash ... ) as
~ opposed to devfs, which
is only virtual, just like /proc.

By the way, I believe that Mandrake Linux is an exception to this, I've
noticed that they use (1) , in combination with devfs daemon.
devfsd daemon is a userspace program that makes a system based on devfs
compatible with the "old"  way.  

~From the userspace point of view , both formats are the same of course,
they still keep the same major/minor numbers.

Hope this could help you in some way , (I am really not an expert on this)

Greetings,
Daniel

Jeremy Bowen wrote:

|Hi
|
|I've seen various references to both
|1) "/dev/mtd/x" and
|2) "/dev/mtdx".
|
|My system uses the 1st format. Could someone please help me understand the
|differences between these two formats and where they come from.
|
|Thanks
|
|Jeremy
|
|______________________________________________________
|Linux MTD discussion mailing list
|http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-mtd/

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