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!
