7.4. Managing Devices

#### Linux From Scratch - Version 7.10-rc1

### Chapter 7. System Configuration

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# 7.4. Managing Devices

## 7.4.1. Network Devices

Udev, by default, names network devices according to Firmware/BIOS data or physical characteristics like the bus, slot, or MAC address. The purpose of this naming convention is to ensure that network devices are named consistently and not based on the time the network card was discovered. For example, on a computer having two network cards made by Intel and Realtek, the network card manufactured by Intel may become eth0 and the Realtek card becomes eth1. In some cases, after a reboot the cards get renumbered the other way around.

In the new naming scheme, typical network device names would then be something like enp5s0 or wlp3s0. If this naming convention is not desired, the traditional naming scheme or a custom scheme can be implemented.

### 7.4.1.1. Disabling Persistent Naming on the Kernel Command Line

The traditional naming scheme using eth0, eth1, etc can be restored by adding `net.ifnames=0` on the kernel command line. This is most appropriate for those systems that have only one ethernet device of the same type. Laptops often have multiple ethernet connections that are named eth0 and wlan0 and are also candidates for this method. The command line is passed in the GRUB configuration file. See Section 8.4.4, “Creating the GRUB Configuration File”.

### 7.4.1.2. Creating Custom Udev Rules

The naming scheme can be customized by creating custom Udev rules. A script has been included that generates the initial rules. Generate these rules by running:

    bash /lib/udev/init-net-rules.sh

Now, inspect the `/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules` file, to find out which name was assigned to which network device:

    cat /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

### Note

In some cases such as when MAC addresess have been assigned to a network card manually or in a virtual environment such as Qemu or Xen, the network rules file may not have been generated because addresses are not consistently assigned. In these cases, this method cannot be used.

The file begins with a comment block followed by two lines for each NIC. The first line for each NIC is a commented description showing its hardware IDs (e.g. its PCI vendor and device IDs, if it's a PCI card), along with its driver in parentheses, if the driver can be found. Neither the hardware ID nor the driver is used to determine which name to give an interface; this information is only for reference. The second line is the Udev rule that matches this NIC and actually assigns it a name.

All Udev rules are made up of several keys, separated by commas and optional whitespace. This rule's keys and an explanation of each of them are as follows:

- `SUBSYSTEM=="net"` - This tells Udev to ignore devices that are not network cards.

- `ACTION=="add"` - This tells Udev to ignore this rule for a uevent that isn't an add ("remove" and "change" uevents also happen, but don't need to rename network interfaces).

- `DRIVERS=="?*"` - This exists so that Udev will ignore VLAN or bridge sub-interfaces (because these sub-interfaces do not have drivers). These sub-interfaces are skipped because the name that would be assigned would collide with their parent devices.

- `ATTR{address}` - The value of this key is the NIC's MAC address.

- `ATTR{type}=="1"` - This ensures the rule only matches the primary interface in the case of certain wireless drivers, which create multiple virtual interfaces. The secondary interfaces are skipped for the same reason that VLAN and bridge sub-interfaces are skipped: there would be a name collision otherwise.

- `NAME` - The value of this key is the name that Udev will assign to this interface.

The value of `NAME` is the important part. Make sure you know which name has been assigned to each of your network cards before proceeding, and be sure to use that `NAME` value when creating your configuration files below.

## 7.4.2. CD-ROM symlinks

Some software that you may want to install later (e.g., various media players) expect the `/dev/cdrom` and `/dev/dvd` symlinks to exist, and to point to a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM device. Also, it may be convenient to put references to those symlinks into `/etc/fstab`. Udev comes with a script that will generate rules files to create these symlinks for you, depending on the capabilities of each device, but you need to decide which of two modes of operation you wish to have the script use.

First, the script can operate in “by-path” mode (used by default for USB and FireWire devices), where the rules it creates depend on the physical path to the CD or DVD device. Second, it can operate in “by-id” mode (default for IDE and SCSI devices), where the rules it creates depend on identification strings stored in the CD or DVD device itself. The path is determined by Udev's path_id script, and the identification strings are read from the hardware by its ata_id or scsi_id programs, depending on which type of device you have.

There are advantages to each approach; the correct approach to use will depend on what kinds of device changes may happen. If you expect the physical path to the device (that is, the ports and/or slots that it plugs into) to change, for example because you plan on moving the drive to a different IDE port or a different USB connector, then you should use the “by-id” mode. On the other hand, if you expect the device's identification to change, for example because it may die, and you would replace it with a different device with the same capabilities and which is plugged into the same connectors, then you should use the “by-path” mode.

If either type of change is possible with your drive, then choose a mode based on the type of change you expect to happen more often.

### Important

External devices (for example, a USB-connected CD drive) should not use by-path persistence, because each time the device is plugged into a new external port, its physical path will change. All externally-connected devices will have this problem if you write Udev rules to recognize them by their physical path; the problem is not limited to CD and DVD drives.

If you wish to see the values that the Udev scripts will use, then for the appropriate CD-ROM device, find the corresponding directory under `/sys` (e.g., this can be `/sys/block/hdd`) and run a command similar to the following:

    udevadm test /sys/block/hdd

Look at the lines containing the output of various *_id programs. The “by-id” mode will use the ID_SERIAL value if it exists and is not empty, otherwise it will use a combination of ID_MODEL and ID_REVISION. The “by-path” mode will use the ID_PATH value.

If the default mode is not suitable for your situation, then the following modification can be made to the `/etc/udev/rules.d/83-cdrom-symlinks.rules` file, as follows (where `mode` is one of “by-id” or “by-path”):

    sed -i -e 's/"write_cd_rules"/"write_cd_rules mode"/' \
        /etc/udev/rules.d/83-cdrom-symlinks.rules

Note that it is not necessary to create the rules files or symlinks at this time, because you have bind-mounted the host's `/dev` directory into the LFS system, and we assume the symlinks exist on the host. The rules and symlinks will be created the first time you boot your LFS system.

However, if you have multiple CD-ROM devices, then the symlinks generated at that time may point to different devices than they point to on your host, because devices are not discovered in a predictable order. The assignments created when you first boot the LFS system will be stable, so this is only an issue if you need the symlinks on both systems to point to the same device. If you need that, then inspect (and possibly edit) the generated `/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-cd.rules` file after booting, to make sure the assigned symlinks match what you need.

## 7.4.3. Dealing with duplicate devices

As explained in Section 7.3, “Overview of Device and Module Handling”, the order in which devices with the same function appear in `/dev` is essentially random. E.g., if you have a USB web camera and a TV tuner, sometimes `/dev/video0` refers to the camera and `/dev/video1` refers to the tuner, and sometimes after a reboot the order changes to the opposite one. For all classes of hardware except sound cards and network cards, this is fixable by creating Udev rules for custom persistent symlinks. The case of network cards is covered separately in Section 7.5, “General Network Configuration”, and sound card configuration can be found in BLFS.

For each of your devices that is likely to have this problem (even if the problem doesn't exist in your current Linux distribution), find the corresponding directory under `/sys/class` or `/sys/block`. For video devices, this may be `/sys/class/video4linux/video`X``. Figure out the attributes that identify the device uniquely (usually, vendor and product IDs and/or serial numbers work):

    udevadm info -a -p /sys/class/video4linux/video0

Then write rules that create the symlinks, e.g.:

    cat > /etc/udev/rules.d/83-duplicate_devs.rules << "EOF"

    # Persistent symlinks for webcam and tuner
    KERNEL=="video*", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1910", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0d81", \
        SYMLINK+="webcam"
    KERNEL=="video*", ATTRS{device}=="0x036f", ATTRS{vendor}=="0x109e", \
        SYMLINK+="tvtuner"

    EOF

The result is that `/dev/video0` and `/dev/video1` devices still refer randomly to the tuner and the web camera (and thus should never be used directly), but there are symlinks `/dev/tvtuner` and `/dev/webcam` that always point to the correct device.

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