loop device creation [was Re: udev: Directory for custom device nodes.]

[Harald Hoyer]

Charles R. Anderson wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 12:45:41PM +0100, Harald Hoyer wrote:
> 
>>tty1 tty2 tty3 tty4 tty5 tty6 loop0 loop1 loop2 loop3 loop4 loop5 loop6 
>>loop7 lp0 lp1 lp2 lp3 parport0 parport1 parport2 parport3 net/tun ppp 
>>console null zero
> 
> 
> Why doesn't the loop module cause /dev/loop* device node creation at
> load time?  E.g. I have in /etc/modprobe.conf:
> 
> options loop max_loop=128
> 
> and /etc/fstab I have many of these:
> 
> /iso/FC3-i386-DVD.iso /mnt/heidelberg-i386-DVD iso9660 ro,loop=/dev/loop59,nosuid,nodev 0 0
> 
> Shouldn't rc.sysinit's "mount -a" cause all the loop devices to be
> created automatically?
> 
> It seems to not work at boot time, but later a manual "mount -a" does 
> create the devices...
> 

The loop module gets autoloaded by accessing /dev/loop.
A program (mount) would have to load the module, if it wants /dev/loop* and 
wait for udev to create the device.
We could load the loop device on system startup, but you may not want to have 
loaded "every" module, you could possibly use in one session.