udev

About

udev allows Linux users to have a dynamic /dev directory and it provides the ability to have persistent device names.

Documentation

udev comes with a lot of documentation and full manpages included in the source tarball. If, for some reason, that is not enough, here is a list of some online references about the program, and how to configure it properly:

A FAQ which answers a number of questions about what udev is, and how it compares to other programs.
A OLS 2003 paper about how udev was originally designed, and why it was created.
The OLS 2003 presentation that went along with the paper.
A more recent article about udev and how it works was published in Linux Journal.
Writing udev rules This is the online copy of the same file contained within the udev release.
A general udev primer
udev on Fedora
Gentoo udev guide
The last word on how udev and devfs compare.

Requirements

It requires a 2.6 Linux kernel.

Getting

The latest version of udev is available on kernel.org.

Using

udev is included in almost every 2.6 kernel based Linux distribution that is shipping, so please use the packages provided by your distro instead of trying to install from the source tree. But if you insist, please read the README files in the source tarball for how to set it up initially.

Questions

Any questions about udev should be addressed to the email address located in the README file within the source tarball.

Thanks

udev was originally developed by Greg Kroah-Hartman with much help from Dan Stekloff, Kay Sievers and many others. Thanks also to Kay for the graphic on this page.