plex86.o gets dynamically allocated major and minor numbers upon
installation, so you'll need to wither modify the source so it
doesn't start out with major and minor numbers of zero (telling the
system to dynamically allocate) (careful about conflicts!), or you
can recompile your kernel with the experimental "devfs".
I did the latter for the 2.4.17 kernel on my Debian Potatoe box.
You'll want to apt-get install kernel-package, so that you can use
mae-kpkg to makeyour own kernel .debs. You'll probably also want to
modify linux/fs/devfs/base.c to mount devfs at /dev/devfs instead of
at /dev. That way you won't have to risk monkeying with /etc/fstab.
You'll just have to symlink /dev/devfs/misc to /dev/misc and plex86.o
will create it's own device file when it loads.
The modification to base.c is pretty simple. It's somewhere in the
last 10 lines or so of the file in 2.4.17. You modify a single line.
I don't have the original, or I'd make you a patch. I have a .deb, of
my kernel, but I've done some minor hacking on the USB keyboard driver
and pulled as much as possible out of the kernel and into modules. You'd
shoot me for having to install modules to use the floppy drive,
networking, etc.
You want to change:
err = do_mount("none" , "/dev", "devfs", 0, "");
to read:
err = do_mount("none" , "/dev/devfs", "devfs", 0, "");
Make sure to run "mkdir /dev/devfs" so you have a mount point on startup.
Also, keep a backup kernel around. You might as well download 2.4.18
while you're going through the trouble of recompiling.
You're where I was about 24 hours ago. You'll soon discover that
plex86 is fine with "bochs-opt" lines, but not "bochs-init" in the
runtime configuration files.
Good luck,
Karl
