/.dev directory

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 08:32:45AM +1100, Cameron Hutchison wrote:

> Once upon a time Jesus Garcia said...
> > I use Hoary and today i've seen i have a /.dev directory.
> > It  seems like /dev dir but it was not been accessed/used since 3 months ago.
> > It's save to remove this dir??
> 
> The udev package is used to create a dynamic /dev. To do this, it mounts
> a memory filesystem (tmpfs) over /dev. The original /dev on the disk is
> redirected to /.dev .
> 
> 
> You can remove /.dev if you want. The way to do this is to unmount /.dev
> and remove the .dev directory (which will be empty after it is
> unmounted).

This directory exists so that it is possible to switch back to a static /dev
if necessary.  For example, some packages, when installed, will create
device nodes there.  If you were to disable udev, the contents of /.dev
would become your real /dev.

(note that disabling udev should never be necessary, and is not recommended
in any case)

-- 
 - mdz