See the attached testcase: I get directories and symlinks, but no actual device files.

The QDir::System filter is explicitely passed (whose description, btw, is "List system files (on Unix, FIFOs, sockets and device files are included; on Windows, .lnk files are included)").

I think I tracked this issue down to http://qt.gitorious.org/qt/qt/blobs/master/src/gui/dialogs/qfilesystemmodel.cpp#line1819 . _q_fileSystemChanged is the method called by the gathering thread when new data is available. Line 1849 is the problem:

if (info.size() == -1 && !info.isSymLink()) {

size() is defined here and it returns -1 for all kind of special files: http://qt.gitorious.org/qt/qt/blobs/master/src/gui/dialogs/qfileinfogatherer_p.h#line127

So: device files are not symlinks and report a size of -1, thus they are removed from the model.