xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/device.9 (revision cefd51ec44292b8783adfd5cb1c5994e40c55595)
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29.\" $Id$
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31.Dd June 16, 1998
32.Dt device 9
33.Os FreeBSD
34.Sh NAME
35.Nm device
36.Nd an abstract representation of a device
37.Sh SYNOPSYS
38.Dv typedef struct device *device_t;
39.Sh DESCRIPTION
40.Pp
41The device object represents a piece of hardware attached to the
42system such as an expansion card, the bus which that card is plugged
43into, disk drives attached to the expansion card etc.
44The system defines one device,
45.Dv root_bus
46and all other devices are created dynamically during
47autoconfiguration.  Normally devices representing toplevel busses in
48the system (ISA, PCI etc.) will be attached directly to
49.Dv root_bus
50and other devices will be added as children of their relavent bus.
51.Pp
52The devices in a system form a tree. All devices except
53.Dv root_bus
54have a parent (see
55.Xr device_get_parent 9 ).
56In addition, any device can have children attached to it (see
57.Xr device_add_child 9 ,
58.Xr device_add_child_after 9 ,
59.Xr device_find_child 9 ,
60and
61.Xr device_delete_child 9 ).
62.Pp
63A device which has been successfully been probed and attached to the
64system will also have a driver (see
65.Xr device_get_driver 9
66and
67.Xr driver 9 )
68and a devclass (see
69.Xr device_get_devclass 9
70and
71.Xr devclass 9 ).
72Various other attributes of the device include a unit number (see
73.Xr device_get_unit 9 ),
74verbose description (normally supplied by the driver, see
75.Xr device_set_desc 9
76and
77.Xr device_get_desc 9 ),
78a set of bus-specific variables (see
79.Xr device_get_ivars 9 )
80and a set of driver-specific variables (see
81.Xr device_get_softc 9 ).
82.Pp
83Devices can be in one of several states:
84.Bl -tag -width DS_NOTPRESENT
85.It Ar DS_NOTPRESENT
86the device has not been probed for existence or the probe failed
87.It Ar DS_ALIVE
88the device probe succeeded but not yet attached
89.It Ar DS_ATTACHED
90the device has been successfully attached
91.It Ar DS_BUSY
92the device is currently open
93.El
94.Pp
95The current state of the device can be determined by calling
96.Xr device_get_state 9 .
97.Sh SEE ALSO
98.Xr driver 9 ,
99.Xr devclass 9
100.Sh AUTHORS
101This man page was written by
102.An Doug Rabson .
103