Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: "special device /dev/hdc does not exist". What does this mean?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Nikos,

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 10:06:15PM +0300, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> >However, I can't access my DVD drives.  I know at least one of them
> >works, because I installed Gentoo from it.

> >When I do

> >   mount -tiso9660 /dev/hdc /cdrom

> >, it comes back with "special device /dev/hdc does not exist".  And yes,
> >there was a CD in the drive, and /cdrom exists.

> >What does "special device" mean here?  Does it mean the physcial
> >hardware, the controller chip, the directory entry /dev/hdc, the driver
> >in the kernel, or what?  What is "special" about my DVD writer?

> /dev/hdc (and other files in /dev) are not called "files", they're
> called "special devices").

Ah!  I really wish they weren't.  Didn't they used to be called "device
files"?

> >Well, to answer some of my questions, I was missing a /dev/hdc, so I
> >made one with

> ># mknod /dev/hdc b 22 0

> >.  This didn't help one iota.  I had a look at dmesg, but there was no
> >mention of hdc in it.  (It did mention hdg, hdh, where my main hard
> >drives are (don't ask!)).

> Use /dev/sdc instead of /dev/hdc.

I booted up in to the kernel, did # ls /dev/sd*, and the only things
displayed were /dev/sda and /dev/sda1.  That is the place where my USB
stick gets mounted.

> The default in new kernels is to only use /dev/sd*.

I'm totally confused.  Doesn't "sd*" mean "SCSI disk drive"?  When I was
installing Gentoo from the CD, I had to mount my main hard drive as
/dev/sdb5.  When I built my own kernel, it needed /dev/hdh5.

This seems crazy.  Is it documented anywhere in Gentoo?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).