xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/devctl.4 (revision cab6a39d7b343596a5823e65c0f7b426551ec22d)
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24.\" $FreeBSD$
25.\"
26.Dd September 21, 2020
27.Dt DEVCTL 4
28.Os
29.Sh NAME
30.Nm devctl
31.Nd "device event reporting and device control interface"
32.Sh SYNOPSIS
33The
34.Nm
35driver is automatically included in the kernel.
36.Sh DESCRIPTION
37The
38.Nm
39device is used to report device events from the kernel.
40Future versions will allow for some device control as well.
41.Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
42This design allows only one reader for
43.Pa /dev/devctl .
44This is not desirable
45in the long run, but will get a lot of hair out of this implementation.
46Maybe we should make this device a clonable device.
47.Pp
48Also note: we specifically do not attach a device to the
49.Vt device_t
50tree
51to avoid potential chicken and egg problems.
52One could argue that all of this belongs to the root node.
53One could also further argue that the
54.Xr sysctl 3
55interface that we have now might more properly be an
56.Xr ioctl 2
57interface.
58.Pp
59.Dv SIGIO
60support is included in the driver.
61However, the author is not sure that the
62.Dv SIGIO
63support is done correctly.
64It was copied from a driver that had
65.Dv SIGIO
66support that likely has not been
67tested since
68.Fx 3.4
69or
70.Fx 2.2.8 !
71.Pp
72The read channel for this device is used to report changes to
73userland in realtime.
74We return one record at a time.
75If you try to read this device a character at a time, you will lose
76the rest of the data.
77Listening programs are expected to cope.
78.Pp
79The sysctl
80.Va hw.bus.devctl_queue
81can be used to control queue length.
82It is set to 0 to disable
83.Nm
84when no
85.Xr devd 8
86is running.
87.Sh PROTOCOL
88The
89.Nm
90device
91uses an
92.Tn ASCII
93protocol.
94The driver returns one record at a time to its readers.
95Each record is terminated with a newline.
96The first character of the record is the event type.
97.Pp
98.Bl -column -compact "Type" "Description"
99.Em "Type	Description"
100!	A notify event, such as a link state change.
101+	Device node in tree attached.
102-	Device node in tree detached.
103?	Unknown device detected.
104.El
105.Ss Message Formats
106Except for the first character in the record, attach and detach
107messages have the same format.
108.Pp
109.D1 Ar T Ns Ar dev Li at Ar parent Li on Ar location
110.Pp
111.Bl -column -compact "location" "Description"
112.Em "Part	Description"
113.It Ar T Ta "+ or -"
114.It Ar dev Ta "The device name that was attached/detached."
115.It Ar parent Ta "The device name of the parent bus that attached the device."
116.It Ar location Ta "Bus specific location information."
117.El
118.Pp
119The nomatch messages can be used to load devices driver.
120If you load a device driver, then one of two things can happen.
121If the device driver attaches to something, you will get a device
122attached message.
123If it does not, then nothing will happen.
124.Pp
125The attach and detach messages arrive after the event.
126This means one cannot use the attach message to load an alternate
127driver.
128The attach message driver has already claimed this device.
129One cannot use the detach messages to flush data to the device.
130The device is already gone.
131.Pp
132All values passed back are of the form
133.Sq key=value
134or
135.Sq key="value" .
136When the latter, the string
137.Dq value
138must have any internal backslashes doubled.
139It must also have any internal double quote characters
140.Sq "
141preceded by a backslash.
142All other characters should be passed through.
143.Sh SEE ALSO
144.Xr devd 8
145