-
-udev - a userspace device manager
-
-For more information on the design, and structure of this project, see the
-files in the docs/ directory.
-
-To use:
-
-- You must be running a 2.6 version of the Linux kernel.
-
-- Your 2.6 kernel must have had CONFIG_HOTPLUG enabled when it was built.
-
-- Make sure sysfs is mounted at /sys. No other location is supported.
- You can mount it by running:
- mount -t sysfs none /sys
-
-- Make sure you integrate udev with your hotplug setup. There is a copy of
- the rules files for all major distros in the etc/udev folder. You may look
- there how others are doing it.
-
-- Make sure you integrate with the kernel hotplug events. Later versions of
- udev are able to listen directly to a netlink socket, older versions used
- udevsend to feed the udev daemon with the kernel event. The most basic
- setup to run udev is to let the kernel for the udev binary directly:
- echo "/sbin/udev" > /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug
-
- While this may work in some setups, it is not recommended to do. A recent
- kernel and udev version is able to operate with the event serializing daemon
- udevd, that makes sure, that no "remove" event will beat a "add" event for
- the same device.
-
-- Build the project:
- make
-
- Note:
- There are a number of different flags that you can use when building
- udev. They are as follows:
- prefix
- set this to the default root that you want udev to be
- installed into. This works just like the 'configure --prefix'
- script does. Default value is ''. Only override this if you
- really know what you are doing.
- USE_KLIBC
- if set to 'true', udev is built and linked against the
- included version of klibc. Default value is 'false'.
- USE_LOG
- if set to 'true', udev will emit messages to the syslog when
- it creates or removes device nodes. This is helpful to see
- what udev is doing. This is enabled by default. Note, if you
- are building udev against klibc it is recommended that you
- disable this option (due to klibc's syslog implementation.)
- USE_SELINUX
- if set to 'true', udev will be built with SELinux support
- enabled. This is disabled by default.
- DEBUG
- if set to 'true', debugging messages will be sent to the syslog
- as udev is run. Default value is 'false'.
- KERNEL_DIR
- If this is not set it will default to /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build
- This is used if USE_KLIBC=true to find the kernel include
- directory that klibc needs to build against. This must be set
- if you are not building udev while running a 2.6 kernel.
- EXTRAS
- if set, will build the "extra" helper programs as specified
- as listed (see below for an example.)
-
- So, if you want to build udev using klibc with debugging messages, you
- would do:
- make USE_KLIBC=true DEBUG=true
-
- If you want to build the udev helper program cdrom_id and scsi_id you
- would do:
- make EXTRAS="extras/cdrom_id extras/scsi_id"
-
- udev will follow the setting of the debug level in udev.conf. Adapt this
- value to see the debug in syslog.
-
-- Install the project:
- make install
-
- This will put the udev binaries in /sbin, create the and /etc/udev
- directories, and place the udev configuration files in /etc/udev/. You
- will probably want to edit the *.rules files to create custom naming
- rules. More info on how the config files are set up are contained in
- comments in the files, and is located in the documentation.
-
-- Add and remove devices from the system and marvel as nodes are created
- and removed in /dev based on the device types.
-
-- If you later get sick of it, uninstall it:
- make uninstall
-
-If nothing seems to happen, make sure your build worked properly by
-running the udev-test.pl script as root in the test/ subdirectory of the
-udev source tree. Running udevstart should populate an empty /dev
-directory. You may test, if a node is recreated after running udevstart.
-
-Development and documentation help is very much appreciated, see the TODO
-file for a list of things left to be done.
-
-Any comment/questions/concerns please let me and the other udev developers
-know by sending a message to the linux-hotplug-devel mailing list at:
- linux-hotplug-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
-
-greg k-h
-greg@kroah.com
+udev - userspace device management
+
+Integrating udev in the system has complex dependencies and differs from distro
+to distro. All major distros depend on udev these days and the system may not
+work without a properly installed version. The upstream udev project does not
+recommend to replace a distro's udev installation with the upstream version.
+
+Tools and rules shipped by udev are not public API and may change at any time.
+Never call any private tool in /lib/udev from any external application, it might
+just go away in the next release. Access to udev information is only offered
+by udevadm and libudev. Tools and rules in /lib/udev and the entire content of
+/dev/.udev/ is private to udev.
+
+Requirements:
+ - Version 2.6.25 of the Linux kernel with sysfs, procfs, signalfd, inotify,
+ unix domain sockets, networking and hotplug enabled:
+ CONFIG_HOTPLUG=y
+ CONFIG_UEVENT_HELPER_PATH=""
+ CONFIG_NET=y
+ CONFIG_UNIX=y
+ CONFIG_SYSFS=y
+ CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED*=n
+ CONFIG_PROC_FS=y
+ CONFIG_TMPFS=y
+ CONFIG_TMPFS_POSIX_ACL=y
+ CONFIG_INOTIFY=y
+ CONFIG_SIGNALFD=y
+
+ - For reliable operation, the kernel must not use the CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED*
+ option.
+
+ - Unix domain sockets (CONFIG_UNIX) as a loadable kernel module is not
+ supported.
+
+ - The proc filesystem must be mounted on /proc/, the sysfs filesystem must
+ be mounted at /sys/. No other locations are supported by udev.
+
+ - The system must have the following group names resolvable at udev startup:
+ disk, cdrom, floppy, tape, audio, video, lp, tty, dialout, kmem.
+ Especially in LDAP setups, it is required, that getgrnam() is able to resolve
+ these group names with only the rootfs mounted, and while no network is
+ available.
+
+ - To build all udev extras, libacl, libglib2, libusb, usbutils, pciutils,
+ gperf are needed. These dependencies can be disabled with the
+ --disable-extras option.
+
+Operation:
+ Udev creates and removes device nodes in /dev/, based on events the kernel
+ sends out on device discovery or removal.
+
+ - Early in the boot process, the /dev/ directory should get a 'tmpfs'
+ filesystem mounted, which is maintained by udev. Created nodes or changed
+ permissions will not survive a reboot, which is intentional.
+
+ - The content of /lib/udev/devices/ directory which contains the nodes,
+ symlinks and directories, which are always expected to be in /dev, should
+ be copied over to the tmpfs mounted /dev, to provide the required nodes
+ to initialize udev and continue booting.
+
+ - The old hotplug helper /sbin/hotplug should be disabled in the kernel
+ configuration, it is not needed, and may render the system unusable
+ because of a fork-bombing behavior.
+
+ - All kernel events are matched against a set of specified rules in
+ /lib/udev/rules.d/ which make it possible to hook into the event
+ processing to load required kernel modules and setup devices. For all
+ devices the kernel exports a major/minor number, udev will create a
+ device node with the default kernel name, or the one specified by a
+ matching udev rule.
+
+Please direct any comment/question/concern to the linux-hotplug mailing list at:
+ linux-hotplug@vger.kernel.org
~ianmdlvl / elogind.git / blobdiff