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Primary symptom: /proc/self/fd is there and normally populated, however /dev/fd is not. Process substitution therefore fails, because bash wants to create files under /dev/fd.

/dev/.static/ and /dev/.udev are populated. aptitude udev shows that the Debian package is installed, even though udev cannot be supported on this Xen vps (and, I believe, isn't supported by default until later stable versions of the Linux kernel).

Host:

Linux version 2.6.16.29-xen (root@potige) (gcc version 4.1.2 20061028 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-19)) #1 SMP Tue Dec 5 20:43:23 CET 2006

The Debian inst. is an up-to-date Lenny 5.0.4.

Question

I can solve the immediate problem by symlinking from proc/self/fd to /dev/fd, and putting the appropriate script in init.d. But are there any risks arising from Debian being misinformed about what my vps can do? And if so, what should I do about it?

Charles Stewart
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1 Answers1

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Most Xen HowTos I've seen (HowToForge, debian.org) indicate that udev needs to be enabled at image creation by passing --role=udev to xen-create-image.

I doubt you can create an image that uses udev on a running system that doesn't support it, but it might be possible.

My best guess is that you should remove the udev package from your Lenny guest (apt-get remove udev), and let it use the old devfs. If you have packages that depend on udev, you may need to remove them and find alternatives that do not.

quack quixote
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