possibly a dumb question but the latest embinux android root
filesystem now has hard-coded special device files:
brw-r--r-- 1 root root 179, 0 2009-05-23 09:49 mmcblk0
brw-r--r-- 1 root root 179, 1 2009-05-23 09:50 mmcblk0p1
brw-r--r-- 1 root root 179, 2 2009-05-23 09:50 mmcblk0p2
which it didn't before. what this does is force the user to un-tar
and copy the rootfs files as root since non-root users can't copy
special device files.
however, it's not clear why those device files need to be in the
initial rootfs. certainly, the kernel doesn't need them to mount the
rootfs. and they're not used for mount points afterwards. and if one
needs them only after the system is up and running, then it might be
feasible to "mknod" those device files as part of some kind of android
"firstboot" processing. mostly, it's just that having those three
device files as part of the initial android rootfs is a bit of a pain
in terms of *needing* superuser access.
i'm shortly going to test leaving them out and seeing what happens,
but if anyone has an answer before then, i'd be glad to hear it.
rday