Handling device files
Linux has had a long history of device managers. Initially, administrators needed to make sure that the device nodes were already present on the file system (/dev was part of the persisted file system). Gradually, more dynamic approaches were used for device management.
Nowadays, device files are managed through a combination of a pseudo file system (devtmpfs) and a user space device manager called udev. This device manager has been merged in systemd as well, becoming systemd-udevd.
Note
There are projects, such as eudev, which provide udev functionality without requiring systemd to be installed and enabled on the system.
The device manager listens on a kernel socket for kernel events. These events inform the device manager about ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access