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devfs is obsolete. Debian/Etch uses Devfs is an alternative to "real" character and block special devices on your root filesystem. Kernel device drivers can register devices by name rather than major and minor numbers. These devices will appear in devfs automatically, with whatever default ownership and protection the driver specified. A daemon (devfsd) can be used to override these defaults. Devfs has been in the kernel since 2.3.46.
There are two aspects to devfs:
- One is the underlying device namespace, which is a namespace just like any mounted filesystem.
- The other aspect is the filesystem code which provides a view of the device namespace.
The reason to make a distinction is because devfs can be mounted many times, with each mount showing the same device namespace. Changes made are global to all mounted devfs filesystems. Also, because the devfs namespace exists without any devfs mounts, you can easily mount the root filesystem by referring to an entry in the devfs namespace.
See also udev