Chapter 17. kobjects and sysfs

A significant new feature in the 2.6 Linux kernel is the addition of a unified device model. The device model provides a single mechanism for representing devices and describing their topology in the system. Such a system provides several benefits:

  • Minimization of code duplication

  • A mechanism for providing common facilities, such as reference counting

  • The capability to enumerate all the devices in the system, view their status, and see to what bus they attach

  • The capability to generate a complete and valid tree of the entire device structure of the system, including all buses and interconnections

  • The capability to link devices to their drivers and vice versa

  • The capability to categorize devices by their class, such as ...

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