> I started udev with /sbin/start_udev, as in the init script, but that seems
> to have no effect ("ps aux | grep udev" gives me no output.)

The fact that /sbin/start_udev doesn't work is obviously a problem.

Does the script exist? Does it run? Does it give errors?

It exists, it runs, it fails silently. The only output from "/sbin/start_udev || echo foo" is "foo".

Are you
capturing all the errors when the init script runs? Have you tried adding 'set +x' to your init script?Are you using the full start up method shown in libguestfs's appliance/init?

No, I have exactly the init that you had in your blog post. I'm mounting /sys and then running /sbin/start_udev manually.

> If I start the
> guest with
>
> qemu-kvm -kernel kernel -initrd initrd -hda root -device virtio-serial
> -serial stdio -chardev
> socket,path=/home/uckelman/projects/lightbox/supermin/foo,id=channel0
> -device virtserialport,chardev=channel0,name=org.libguestfs.channel.0
>
> what should I expect the device connected to the pipe on the guest side to
> be called?

/dev/virtio-ports/<name>

See: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VirtioSerial

Rich.

/sys/class/virtio-ports/vport0p1 and its contents are there after I mount /sys, so that's a good sign, I guess.