udev/hotplug?

[Phil Meyer]

Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
>
>    If I don't have anything that's either hotpluggable, or going to be 
> hotplugged on a machine, is there any reason why I should have udev 
> running?  How can I shut it off?  (I can't remove it because of all 
> the dependencies with other stuff.)
>

No, you cannot remove it.  All devices, including permanent stationary 
devices are managed by udev.

udev and hal together manage removable devices.

What you will find, is an empty /dev without udev. :)  Not very useful.

There are three layered pieces to device and driver management in Fedora.

1.   kuzdu discovers devices and manages /etc/sysconfig/hwconf
2.   udev creates all device entries based upon rules on /etc/udev/rules.d
3.   hal will take over management of certain devices that udev creates, 
such as pluggable devices, and cdrom and DVD -payers.


This is an over simplification to illustrate what would happen if you 
pulled out udev.  The structure would collapse. :)

Other Linux distros substitute other device discovery tools for kudzu, 
but the other two layers are present in  all modern distros that use a 
2.6 kernel.

So, it could also be described this way:

1.   Device discovery tool.
2.   udev
3.   hal (optional)


Good luck!