[Aydan]

Thanks for all the pointers you're giving me. I really do feel like a NOOB here

mdev -s runs after the filesystems are mounted and
"cat /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug" gives me "/bin/mdev", which is where mdev resides.

this is my /etc/init.d/mdev:

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          mdev
# Required-Start:    mountdevsubfs
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start:     S
# Default-Stop:      0 6
# Short-Description: register mdev hotplug handler
# Description:
### END INIT INFO
# /etc/init.d/mdev
#
echo mount:
mount

# Carry out specific functions when asked to by the system
case "$1" in
  start)
    echo "Starting mdev"
    echo /bin/mdev > /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug
    /bin/mdev -s
    ls /dev
    ;;
  stop)
    echo "Stopping mdev"
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/blah {start|stop}"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac

exit 0

There's still some debug stuff in there.

EDIT: Hotplug seems to work. I plugged in an SD-card and the correct /dev/ entries showed up. Loading the wifi module also produced a /dev/eth0 node.

Regards
Aydan