SOLVED
No, there's no problem with that - as long as ASM_DISKSTRING is set appropriately the device files can be anywhere.
It's simply convention that they liv somewhere under /dev
What I wouldn't do is ever have the in anything but the root (/) filesystem.
I am an HPE Employee
Fernando,
No I'm afraid I don't - as "convention" says that devices go under /dev, 99 times out of 100 that's what people do. But the system does support putting device special files elsewhere if you want to.
For example the mksf command (which is often used for creating tape device files) provides a "-D" option:
-D directory Override the default device installation directory
/dev and install the special files in directory
instead. directory must exist; otherwise, mksf
displays an error message and exits. See
WARNINGS.
And of course the WARNINGS section of mksf says:
WARNINGS
Many commands and subsystems assume their device files are in /dev;
therefore, the use of the -D option is discouraged.
And I ceratinly wouldn't go creating tape DSFs anywhere but under /dev (as there are assumptions in commands about where the DSFs are). But in the case of Oracle ASM, only ASM needs to access the DSFs, and that is fully controlable using ASM_DISKSTRING.
Oracle support article 1313687.1 clearly shows DSFs being created outside /dev, but it doesn't explicitly state that this is for HP-UX (it mentions "Linux and Unix", so to me that includes HP-UX)
I am an HPE Employee