1. Daemon for the device filesystem This daemon sets up the /dev filesystem for use. It creates required symbolic links in /dev and also creates (if so configured, as is the default) symbolic links to the "old" names for devices. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

2. The devfsd programme is a daemon, run by the system bootscripts which can provide for intelligent management ofdevice entries in the Device Filesystem (devfs). As part of its setup phase devfsd creates certain symbolic links which are compiled into the code. These links are required by /usr/src/linux/Documentation/devices.txt. This behaviour may change in future revisions .devfsd will read the special control file .devfsd in amounted devfs, listening for the creation and removal of device entries (this is termed a change operation). For each change operation, devfsd can take many actions. The daemon will normally run itself in the background and send messages to syslog. The opening of the syslog service is automatically delayed until /dev/log is created. At startup, before switching to daemon mode, devfsd willscan the mounted device tree and will generate synthetic REGISTER events for each leaf node. From Mandrake 9.0 RPM