FC5 /dev/root breaks amanda

[Christopher McCrory]

Hello...

On FC5 /dev/root is a block device, not a symlink to the real device
#/dev/sda3 or other

$ ls -l /dev/root
brw------- 1 root root 8, 3 May  6 12:11 /dev/root

It looks like the owner:perms are not the same as the devices as they
should be.

from /etc/makedev.d:

00macros:=STORAGE  640 root disk

01linux-2.6.x:b $STORAGE               4   0  1   1 root
01linux-2.6.x:b $STORAGE               8   0  1  16 sda

$ ls -l /dev/root /dev/sda3
brw------- 1 root root 8, 3 May  6 12:11 /dev/root
brw-r----- 1 root disk 8, 3 May  6 19:11 /dev/sda3

Not having 640 root:disk on /dev/root breaks backups , specifically amanda.

Is that by design? or an oversite?

[Harald Hoyer]

Christopher McCrory wrote:
> Hello...
>
> On FC5 /dev/root is a block device, not a symlink to the real device
> #/dev/sda3 or other
>
> $ ls -l /dev/root
> brw------- 1 root root 8, 3 May  6 12:11 /dev/root
>
> It looks like the owner:perms are not the same as the devices as they
> should be.
>
> from /etc/makedev.d:
>
> 00macros:=STORAGE  640 root disk
>
> 01linux-2.6.x:b $STORAGE               4   0  1   1 root
> 01linux-2.6.x:b $STORAGE               8   0  1  16 sda
>
> $ ls -l /dev/root /dev/sda3
> brw------- 1 root root 8, 3 May  6 12:11 /dev/root
> brw-r----- 1 root disk 8, 3 May  6 19:11 /dev/sda3
>
> Not having 640 root:disk on /dev/root breaks backups , specifically amanda.
>
> Is that by design? or an oversite?

May be an oversight... /dev/root is created by initrd IIRC. If there would be a sysfs entry, udev would have 
created it with:

$ fgrep root /etc/udev/rules.d/50-udev.rules
...
KERNEL=="root",                 GROUP="disk", MODE="0640"