Driver Compatibility Users of udev have device nodes like /dev/etherd/e0.0 created for them automatically, as needed. These are dynamic device nodes. The aoe driver version 50 and above use dynamic device node minor numbers in order to support a greater number of AoE devices. Some systems use static device nodes, which are present in /dev regardless of what AoE devices are really available to the system. The aoetools contain the aoe-mkdevs and aoe-mkshelf commands, which create these static device nodes. If the static device nodes do not match the static device minor numbers in the kernel, you could accidentally perform reads and writes to the wrong AoE device. (It really is easier to let udev take care of the device nodes.) If you use an aoe driver from the CORAID website (http://support.coraid.com/support/linux/) then just use the aoetools that come bundled with that deiver. If you don't have udev, make sure you always load the aoe module with the aoe_dyndevs=0 option for any driver version above 49. If you didn't get your aoe driver from the CORAID website, and you can't use udev, then here's what to do: * Of course, read the README file in the aoetools sources. * To use aoetools-8 and later with older 2.6 kernels (2.6.13 and earlier), build the aoetools with an extra parameter for "make", like this: make NPERSHELF=10 * Using aoetools-7 and earlier with newer 2.6 kernels (2.6.14 and later) is not recommended. Other combinations should work with the default settings.