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16 Dynamic Kernel Device Management with `udev`

16.1 The /dev Directory
16.2 Kernel uevents and udev
16.3 Drivers, Kernel Modules and Devices
16.4 Booting and Initial Device Setup
16.5 Monitoring the Running udev Daemon
16.6 Influencing Kernel Device Event Handling with udev Rules
16.7 Persistent Device Naming
16.8 Files used by udev
16.9 For More Information

The kernel can add or remove almost any device in a running system. Changes in the device state (whether a device is plugged in or removed) need to be propagated to user space. Devices need to be configured as soon as they are plugged in and recognized. Users of a certain device need to be informed about any changes in this device's recognized state. udev provides the needed infrastructure to dynamically maintain the device node files and symbolic links in the /dev directory. udev rules provide a way to plug external tools into the kernel device event processing. This enables you to customize udev device handling by, for example, adding certain scripts to execute as part of kernel device handling, or request and import additional data to evaluate during device handling.

16.1 The `/dev` Directory #

The device nodes in the /dev directory provide access to the corresponding kernel devices. With udev, the /dev directory reflects the current state of the kernel. Every kernel device has one corresponding device file. If a device is disconnected from the system, the device node is removed.

The content of the /dev directory is kept on a temporary file system and all files are rendered at every system start-up. Manually created or modified files do not, by design, survive a reboot. Static files and directories that should always be in the /dev directory regardless of the state of the corresponding kernel device can be created with systemd-tmpfiles. The configuration files are found in /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/ and /etc/tmpfiles.d/; for more information, see the systemd-tmpfiles(8) man page.

16.2 Kernel `uevents` and `udev` #

The required device information is exported by the sysfs file system. For every device the kernel has detected and initialized, a directory with the device name is created. It contains attribute files with device-specific properties.

Every time a device is added or removed, the kernel sends a uevent to notify udev of the change. The udev daemon reads and parses all provided rules from the /etc/udev/rules.d/*.rules files once at start-up and keeps them in memory. If rules files are changed, added or removed, the daemon can reload the in-memory representation of all rules with the command udevadm control reload_rules. For more details on udev rules and their syntax, refer to Section 16.6, “Influencing Kernel Device Event Handling with udev Rules”.

Every received event is matched against the set of provides rules. The rules can add or change event environment keys, request a specific name for the device node to create, add symbolic links pointing to the node or add programs to run after the device node is created. The driver core uevents are received from a kernel netlink socket.

16.3 Drivers, Kernel Modules and Devices #

The kernel bus drivers probe for devices. For every detected device, the kernel creates an internal device structure while the driver core sends a uevent to the udev daemon. Bus devices identify themselves by a specially-formatted ID, which tells what kind of device it is. Usually these IDs consist of vendor and product ID and other subsystem-specific values. Every bus has its own scheme for these IDs, called MODALIAS. The kernel takes the device information, composes a MODALIAS ID string from it and sends that string along with the event. For a USB mouse, it looks like this:

MODALIAS=usb:v046DpC03Ed2000dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc01ip02

Every device driver carries a list of known aliases for devices it can handle. The list is contained in the kernel module file itself. The program depmod reads the ID lists and creates the file modules.alias in the kernel's /lib/modules directory for all currently available modules. With this infrastructure, module loading is as easy as calling modprobe for every event that carries a MODALIAS key. If modprobe $MODALIAS is called, it matches the device alias composed for the device with the aliases provided by the modules. If a matching entry is found, that module is loaded. All this is automatically triggered by udev.

16.4 Booting and Initial Device Setup #

All device events happening during the boot process before the udev daemon is running are lost, because the infrastructure to handle these events resides on the root file system and is not available at that time. To cover that loss, the kernel provides a uevent file located in the device directory of every device in the sysfs file system. By writing add to that file, the kernel resends the same event as the one lost during boot. A simple loop over all uevent files in /sys triggers all events again to create the device nodes and perform device setup.

As an example, a USB mouse present during boot may not be initialized by the early boot logic, because the driver is not available at that time. The event for the device discovery was lost and failed to find a kernel module for the device. Instead of manually searching for possibly connected devices, udev requests all device events from the kernel after the root file system is available, so the event for the USB mouse device runs again. Now it finds the kernel module on the mounted root file system and the USB mouse can be initialized.

From user space, there is no visible difference between a device coldplug sequence and a device discovery during runtime. In both cases, the same rules are used to match and the same configured programs are run.

16.5 Monitoring the Running `udev` Daemon #

The program udevadm monitor can be used to visualize the driver core events and the timing of the udev event processes.

UEVENT[1185238505.276660] add   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1 (usb)
UDEV  [1185238505.279198] add   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1 (usb)
UEVENT[1185238505.279527] add   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0 (usb)
UDEV  [1185238505.285573] add   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0 (usb)
UEVENT[1185238505.298878] add   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/input/input10 (input)
UDEV  [1185238505.305026] add   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/input/input10 (input)
UEVENT[1185238505.305442] add   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/input/input10/mouse2 (input)
UEVENT[1185238505.306440] add   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/input/input10/event4 (input)
UDEV  [1185238505.325384] add   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/input/input10/event4 (input)
UDEV  [1185238505.342257] add   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/input/input10/mouse2 (input)

The UEVENT lines show the events the kernel has sent over netlink. The UDEV lines show the finished udev event handlers. The timing is printed in microseconds. The time between UEVENT and UDEV is the time udev took to process this event or the udev daemon has delayed its execution to synchronize this event with related and already running events. For example, events for hard disk partitions always wait for the main disk device event to finish, because the partition events may rely on the data that the main disk event has queried from the hardware.

udevadm monitor --env shows the complete event environment:

ACTION=add
DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/input/input10
SUBSYSTEM=input
SEQNUM=1181
NAME="Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse"
PHYS="usb-0000:00:1d.2-1/input0"
UNIQ=""
EV=7
KEY=70000 0 0 0 0
REL=103
MODALIAS=input:b0003v046DpC03Ee0110-e0,1,2,k110,111,112,r0,1,8,amlsfw

udev also sends messages to syslog. The default syslog priority that controls which messages are sent to syslog is specified in the udev configuration file /etc/udev/udev.conf. The log priority of the running daemon can be changed with udevadm control log_priority= level/number.

16.6 Influencing Kernel Device Event Handling with `udev` Rules #

A udev rule can match any property the kernel adds to the event itself or any information that the kernel exports to sysfs. The rule can also request additional information from external programs. Every event is matched against all provided rules. All rules are located in the /etc/udev/rules.d directory.

Every line in the rules file contains at least one key value pair. There are two kinds of keys, match and assignment keys. If all match keys match their values, the rule is applied and the assignment keys are assigned the specified value. A matching rule may specify the name of the device node, add symbolic links pointing to the node or run a specified program as part of the event handling. If no matching rule is found, the default device node name is used to create the device node. Detailed information about the rule syntax and the provided keys to match or import data are described in the udev man page. The following example rules provide a basic introduction to udev rule syntax. The example rules are all taken from the udev default rule set that is located under /etc/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules.

Example 16.1: Example `udev` Rules #

# console
KERNEL=="console", MODE="0600", OPTIONS="last_rule"

# serial devices
KERNEL=="ttyUSB*", ATTRS{product}=="[Pp]alm*Handheld*", SYMLINK+="pilot"

# printer
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", KERNEL=="lp*", NAME="usb/%k", SYMLINK+="usb%k", GROUP="lp"

# kernel firmware loader
SUBSYSTEM=="firmware", ACTION=="add", RUN+="firmware.sh"

The console rule consists of three keys: one match key (KERNEL) and two assign keys (MODE, OPTIONS). The KERNEL match rule searches the device list for any items of the type console. Only exact matches are valid and trigger this rule to be executed. The MODE key assigns special permissions to the device node, in this case, read and write permissions to the owner of this device only. The OPTIONS key makes this rule the last rule to be applied to any device of this type. Any later rule matching this particular device type does not have any effect.

The serial devices rule is not available in 50-udev-default.rules anymore, but it is still worth considering. It consists of two match keys (KERNEL and ATTRS) and one assign key (SYMLINK). The KERNEL key searches for all devices of the ttyUSB type. Using the * wild card, this key matches several of these devices. The second match key, ATTRS, checks whether the product attribute file in sysfs for any ttyUSB device contains a certain string. The assign key (SYMLINK) triggers the addition of a symbolic link to this device under /dev/pilot. The operator used in this key (+=) tells udev to additionally perform this action, even if previous or later rules add other symbolic links. As this rule contains two match keys, it is only applied if both conditions are met.

The printer rule deals with USB printers and contains two match keys which must both apply to get the entire rule applied (SUBSYSTEM and KERNEL). Three assign keys deal with the naming for this device type (NAME), the creation of symbolic device links (SYMLINK) and the group membership for this device type (GROUP). Using the * wild card in the KERNEL key makes it match several lp printer devices. Substitutions are used in both, the NAME and the SYMLINK keys to extend these strings by the internal device name. For example, the symbolic link to the first lp USB printer would read /dev/usblp0.

The kernel firmware loader rule makes udev load additional firmware by an external helper script during runtime. The SUBSYSTEM match key searches for the firmware subsystem. The ACTION key checks whether any device belonging to the firmware subsystem has been added. The RUN+= key triggers the execution of the firmware.sh script to locate the firmware that is to be loaded.

Some general characteristics are common to all rules:

Each rule consists of one or more key value pairs separated by a comma.
A key's operation is determined by the operator. udev rules support several different operators.
Each given value must be enclosed by quotation marks.
Each line of the rules file represents one rule. If a rule is longer than one line, use \ to join the different lines as you would do in shell syntax.
udev rules support a shell-style pattern that matches the *, ?, and [] patterns.
udev rules support substitutions.

16.6.1 Using Operators in `udev` Rules #

Creating keys you can choose from several operators, depending on the type of key you want to create. Match keys will normally be used to find a value that either matches or explicitly mismatches the search value. Match keys contain either of the following operators:

==: Compare for equality. If the key contains a search pattern, all results matching this pattern are valid.
!=: Compare for non-equality. If the key contains a search pattern, all results matching this pattern are valid.

Any of the following operators can be used with assign keys:

=: Assign a value to a key. If the key previously consisted of a list of values, the key resets and only the single value is assigned.
+=: Add a value to a key that contains a list of entries.
:=: Assign a final value. Disallow any later change by later rules.

16.6.2 Using Substitutions in `udev` Rules #

udev rules support the use of placeholders and substitutions. Use them in a similar fashion as you would do in any other scripts. The following substitutions can be used with udev rules:

%r, $root: The device directory, /dev by default.
%p, $devpath: The value of DEVPATH.
%k, $kernel: The value of KERNEL or the internal device name.
%n, $number: The device number.
%N, $tempnode: The temporary name of the device file.
%M, $major: The major number of the device.
%m, $minor: The minor number of the device.
%s{attribute}, $attr{attribute}: The value of a sysfs attribute (specified by attribute).
%E{variable}, $attr{variable}: The value of an environment variable (specified by variable).
%c, $result: The output of PROGRAM.
%%: The % character.
$$: The $ character.

16.6.3 Using `udev` Match Keys #

Match keys describe conditions that must be met before a udev rule can be applied. The following match keys are available:

ACTION: The name of the event action, for example, add or remove when adding or removing a device.
DEVPATH: The device path of the event device, for example, DEVPATH=/bus/pci/drivers/ipw3945 to search for all events related to the ipw3945 driver.
KERNEL: The internal (kernel) name of the event device.
SUBSYSTEM: The subsystem of the event device, for example, SUBSYSTEM=usb for all events related to USB devices.
ATTR{filename}: sysfs attributes of the event device. To match a string contained in the vendor attribute file name, you could use ATTR{vendor}=="On[sS]tream", for example.
KERNELS: Let udev search the device path upwards for a matching device name.
SUBSYSTEMS: Let udev search the device path upwards for a matching device subsystem name.
DRIVERS: Let udev search the device path upwards for a matching device driver name.
ATTRS{filename}: Let udev search the device path upwards for a device with matching sysfs attribute values.
ENV{key}: The value of an environment variable, for example, ENV{ID_BUS}="ieee1394 to search for all events related to the FireWire bus ID.
PROGRAM: Let udev execute an external program. To be successful, the program must return with exit code zero. The program's output, printed to STDOUT, is available to the RESULT key.
RESULT: Match the output string of the last PROGRAM call. Either include this key in the same rule as the PROGRAM key or in a later one.

16.6.4 Using `udev` Assign Keys #

In contrast to the match keys described above, assign keys do not describe conditions that must be met. They assign values, names and actions to the device nodes maintained by udev.

NAME

The name of the device node to be created. After a rule has set a node name, all other rules with a NAME key for this node are ignored.

SYMLINK

The name of a symbolic link related to the node to be created. Multiple matching rules can add symbolic links to be created with the device node. You can also specify multiple symbolic links for one node in one rule using the space character to separate the symbolic link names.

OWNER, GROUP, MODE

The permissions for the new device node. Values specified here overwrite anything that has been compiled in.

ATTR{key}

Specify a value to be written to a sysfs attribute of the event device. If the == operator is used, this key is also used to match against the value of a sysfs attribute.

ENV{key}

Tell udev to export a variable to the environment. If the == operator is used, this key is also used to match against an environment variable.

RUN

Tell udev to add a program to the list of programs to be executed for this device. Keep in mind to restrict this to very short tasks to avoid blocking further events for this device.

LABEL

Add a label where a GOTO can jump to.

GOTO

Tell udev to skip a number of rules and continue with the one that carries the label referenced by the GOTO key.

IMPORT{type}

Load variables into the event environment such as the output of an external program. udev imports variables of several types. If no type is specified, udev tries to determine the type itself based on the executable bit of the file permissions.

program tells udev to execute an external program and import its output.
file tells udev to import a text file.
parent tells udev to import the stored keys from the parent device.

WAIT_FOR_SYSFS

Tells udev to wait for the specified sysfs file to be created for a certain device. For example, WAIT_FOR_SYSFS="ioerr_cnt" informs udev to wait until the ioerr_cnt file has been created.

OPTIONS

The OPTION key may have several values:

last_rule tells udev to ignore all later rules.
ignore_device tells udev to ignore this event completely.
ignore_remove tells udev to ignore all later remove events for the device.
all_partitions tells udev to create device nodes for all available partitions on a block device.

16.7 Persistent Device Naming #

The dynamic device directory and the udev rules infrastructure make it possible to provide stable names for all disk devices—regardless of their order of recognition or the connection used for the device. Every appropriate block device the kernel creates is examined by tools with special knowledge about certain buses, drive types or file systems. Along with the dynamic kernel-provided device node name, udev maintains classes of persistent symbolic links pointing to the device:

/dev/disk
|-- by-id
|   |-- scsi-SATA_HTS726060M9AT00_MRH453M4HWHG7B -> ../../sda
|   |-- scsi-SATA_HTS726060M9AT00_MRH453M4HWHG7B-part1 -> ../../sda1
|   |-- scsi-SATA_HTS726060M9AT00_MRH453M4HWHG7B-part6 -> ../../sda6
|   |-- scsi-SATA_HTS726060M9AT00_MRH453M4HWHG7B-part7 -> ../../sda7
|   |-- usb-Generic_STORAGE_DEVICE_02773 -> ../../sdd
|   `-- usb-Generic_STORAGE_DEVICE_02773-part1 -> ../../sdd1
|-- by-label
|   |-- Photos -> ../../sdd1
|   |-- SUSE10 -> ../../sda7
|   `-- devel -> ../../sda6
|-- by-path
|   |-- pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-0:0:0:0 -> ../../sda
|   |-- pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-0:0:0:0-part1 -> ../../sda1
|   |-- pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-0:0:0:0-part6 -> ../../sda6
|   |-- pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-0:0:0:0-part7 -> ../../sda7
|   |-- pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-1:0:0:0 -> ../../sr0
|   |-- usb-02773:0:0:2 -> ../../sdd
|   |-- usb-02773:0:0:2-part1 -> ../../sdd1
`-- by-uuid
    |-- 159a47a4-e6e6-40be-a757-a629991479ae -> ../../sda7
    |-- 3e999973-00c9-4917-9442-b7633bd95b9e -> ../../sda6
    `-- 4210-8F8C -> ../../sdd1

16.8 Files used by `udev` #

/sys/*: Virtual file system provided by the Linux kernel, exporting all currently known devices. This information is used by udev to create device nodes in /dev
/dev/*: Dynamically created device nodes and static content created with systemd-tmpfiles; for more information, see the systemd-tmpfiles(8) man page.

The following files and directories contain the crucial elements of the udev infrastructure:

/etc/udev/udev.conf: Main udev configuration file.
/etc/udev/rules.d/*: udev event matching rules.
/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/ and /etc/tmpfiles.d/: Responsible for static /dev content.
/usr/lib/udev/*: Helper programs called from udev rules.

16.9 For More Information #

For more information about the udev infrastructure, refer to the following man pages:

udev: General information about udev, keys, rules and other important configuration issues.
udevadm: udevadm can be used to control the runtime behavior of udev, request kernel events, manage the event queue and provide simple debugging mechanisms.
udevd: Information about the udev event managing daemon.

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Reference

16 Dynamic Kernel Device Management with udev

16.1 The /dev Directory #

16.2 Kernel uevents and udev #

16.3 Drivers, Kernel Modules and Devices #

16.4 Booting and Initial Device Setup #

16.5 Monitoring the Running udev Daemon #

16.6 Influencing Kernel Device Event Handling with udev Rules #

Example 16.1: Example udev Rules #

16.6.1 Using Operators in udev Rules #

16.6.2 Using Substitutions in udev Rules #

16.6.3 Using udev Match Keys #

16.6.4 Using udev Assign Keys #