xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/devctl.4 (revision 7f511526c2006de4cafa2a3d255a1e4ca35dc387)
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25.\"	$FreeBSD$
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27.Dd February 11, 2003
28.Dt DEVCTL 4
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm devctl
32.Nd Device event reporting and device control interface.
33.Sh DESCRIPTION
34The
35.Nm
36device is used to report device events from the kernel.
37Future versions will allow for some device control as well.
38.Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
39This design allows only one reader for /dev/devctl.
40This is not desirable
41in the long run, but will get a lot of hair out of this implementation.
42Maybe we should make this device a clonable device.
43.Pp
44Also note: we specifically do not attach a device to the device_t tree
45to avoid potential chicken and egg problems.
46One could argue that all of this belongs to the root node.
47One could also further argue that the sysctl interface that we have
48not might more properly be an ioctl interface.
49.Pp
50SIGIO support is included in the driver.
51However, the author is not sure that the SIGIO support is done correctly.
52It was copied from a driver that had SIGIO support that likely hasn't been
53tested since 3.4 or 2.2.8!
54.Pp
55The read channel for this device is used to report changes to
56userland in realtime.
57We return one record at a time.
58If you try to read this device a character at a time, you will loose
59the rest of the data.
60Listening programs are expected to cope.
61.Pp
62The sysctl and boot parameter hw.bus.devctl_disable is used to disable
63.Nm
64when no devd is running.
65.Sh PROTOCOL
66.Nm
67uses an ASCII protocol.
68The driver returns one record at a time to its readers.
69Each record is terminated with a newline.
70The first character of the record is the event type.
71.Pp
72.Bl -column -compact "Type" "Description"
73.Em "Type	Description"
74+	Device node in tree attached
75-	Device node in tree detached
76?	Unknown device detected
77.El
78.Ss Message formats
79Except for the first character in the record, attach and detach
80messages have the same format.
81.D1 Tdev at parent on location
82.Bl -column -compact "Part" "Description"
83.Em "Part	Description"
84T	+ or -
85dev	The device name that was attached/detached
86parent	The device name of the parent bus that attached the device
87location	Bus specific location information
88.El
89.Pp
90The nomatch messages can be used to load devices driver.
91If you load a device driver, then one of two things can happen.
92If the device driver attaches to something, you'll get a device
93attached message.
94If it doesn't, then nothing will happen.
95.Pp
96The attach and detach messages arrive after the event.
97This means one cannot use the attach message to load an alternate
98driver.
99The attach message driver has already claimed this device.
100One cannot use the detach messages to flush data to the device.
101The device is already gone.
102.Sh SEE ALSO
103.Xr devd 8
104
105