Description of problem: /dev/console etc missing from install Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1.install fc3 2.try to boot custom kernel without initrd 3.fail Actual results: 'unable to open initial console' and kernel panic. Expected results: it should work, but it doesnt. Additional info: The FC3 installer doesnt create device nodes in /dev when installing. Eg if you mount --bind / /mnt and cd /mnt/dev you'll see dev is totally empty. The FC3 boot process is apparently very dependent on initrd and udev. This is rather a PITA when trying to make a secured server with monolithic kernels and no initrd. The solution? A minimal /dev on-disk (instead of a completely empty one, which is what we have now). drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 168 May 20 13:14 . drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 568 May 20 13:16 .. crw-r--r-- 1 root root 5, 1 May 20 13:16 console crw-r--r-- 1 root root 1, 3 May 20 13:14 null drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 May 20 13:14 pts drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 May 20 13:14 shm crw-r--r-- 1 root root 1, 5 May 20 13:14 zero This lets us boot monolithic initrd-less kernels far enough to where udev can take over normally. I know about the http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/udev/ and "Udev without initrd" instructions, but I can't see any good reason to omit these few devices on install and thus saving a lot of people head scratching / google / wasted time.
There's no way to include them in a package -- if we put them in a package and the package gets updated (to include more or something else of that nature), then you've got a dynamic /dev mounted and the update doesn't do what you expect. Plus rpm -V fails. An initrd is _REQUIRED_.
er. it doesn't have to be in a package. hell, the device nodes aren't even in a package _now_ ! all the installer has to do is create a few nodes when making /dev on-disk. it does this for a bunch of other things which arent in any package so I dont see why this would be any different really. whats interesting is that rpm claims /dev is owned by udev but rpm -ql says no.