this uses sed, maybe don't use sed

Don't rely on debian diff -- it may change version and become unavailable.

Debian moving to Red Hat's table-driven makedev (in experimental now)

This uses uname -m for machine type. Need to check names.

should -V option give ${VERSION:S/-/./} or just ${VERSION} ??

This installs to sbin not /dev. Maybe a MESSAGE should report this?

This can use /proc file system to figure out which devices to make.
Should that be in MESSAGE too?

It assumes these groups are available:
kmem   
tty    
dialout 
dip    
root   
lp     
floppy 
disk   
cdrom  
tape   
audio  
video
** make sure all added
or have variables for these used, like ${ROOT_GROUP}, ${DIALER_GROUP}

maybe last sed expressions can be rewritten to use
shell suffix (or prefix) pattern removal
	kern_rev1=${kern_rev%.*.*}
but maybe a kernel revision has more than 3 parts?
	kern_rev2=${kern_rev%.*} ; kern_rev2=${kern_rev2#*.*}

seeing some errors like:
-sh-2.05b# MAKEDEV usb
/usr/sbin/MAKEDEV: line 1: major_/dev/vc=4: No such file or directory
/usr/sbin/MAKEDEV: line 1: major_/dev=5: No such file or directory
/usr/sbin/MAKEDEV: line 1: major_/dev=5: No such file or directory
/usr/sbin/MAKEDEV: line 1: major_/dev=5: No such file or directory
