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udev

"udev supplies the system software with device events, manages permissions of device nodes and may create additional symlinks in the /dev directory, or renames network interfaces." - man udev

Tips

  • Default rules are in /lib/udev/rules.d

Monitor udev events in real time

udevadm monitor

View udev environment for a given disk

This is helpful when writing udev rules.

udevadm info /dev/sda

View human readable information about a disk

udisksctl info -b /dev/sda

Mount namespace problems

In Ubuntu and probably other linuxes udevd runs in its own mount namespace. This means if you mount things using udev rules, by default they will be in an isolated namespace where users and other processes cannot access them. You can view this with:

root@bionic:~# lsblk -o NAME,MOUNTPOINT /dev/sdc
NAME   MOUNTPOINT
sdc
└─sdc1

root@bionic:~# nsenter --all -t $(pgrep systemd-udevd) lsblk -o NAME,MOUNTPOINT /dev/sdc
NAME   MOUNTPOINT
sdc
└─sdc1 /mnt/adea64ca-e340-4961-8a4d-75d8a5970664

To solve this, run systemctl edit systemd-udevd and input the following config:

[Service]
MountFlags=shared

Then run systemctl daemon-reload ; service systemd-udevd --full-restart ; See man 7 mount_namespaces for more info.

Trigger a disk add event for a disk that has already been inserted

udevadm trigger -t devices --name /dev/sda1 --action=add

List builtin modules

udevadm test-builtin --help