12. UDEV rules for DVB

Note

  1. This documentation is outdated. Udev on modern distributions auto-detect the DVB devices.
  2. TODO: change this document to explain how to make DVB devices persistent, as, when a machine has multiple devices, they may be detected on different orders, which could cause apps that relies on the device numbers to fail.

The DVB subsystem currently registers to the sysfs subsystem using the “class_simple” interface.

This means that only the basic information like module loading parameters are presented through sysfs. Other things that might be interesting are currently not available.

Nevertheless it’s now possible to add proper udev rules so that the DVB device nodes are created automatically.

We assume that you have udev already up and running and that have been creating the DVB device nodes manually up to now due to the missing sysfs support.

0. Don’t forget to disable your current method of creating the device nodes manually.

1. Unfortunately, you’ll need a helper script to transform the kernel sysfs device name into the well known dvb adapter / device naming scheme. The script should be called “dvb.sh” and should be placed into a script dir where udev can execute it, most likely /etc/udev/scripts/

So, create a new file /etc/udev/scripts/dvb.sh and add the following:

#!/bin/sh
/bin/echo $1 | /bin/sed -e 's,dvb\([0-9]\)\.\([^0-9]*\)\([0-9]\),dvb/adapter\1/\2\3,'

Don’t forget to make the script executable with “chmod”.

1. You need to create a proper udev rule that will create the device nodes like you know them. All real distributions out there scan the /etc/udev/rules.d directory for rule files. The main udev configuration file /etc/udev/udev.conf will tell you the directory where the rules are, most likely it’s /etc/udev/rules.d/

Create a new rule file in that directory called “dvb.rule” and add the following line:

KERNEL="dvb*", PROGRAM="/etc/udev/scripts/dvb.sh %k", NAME="%c"

If you want more control over the device nodes (for example a special group membership) have a look at “man udev”.

For every device that registers to the sysfs subsystem with a “dvb” prefix, the helper script /etc/udev/scripts/dvb.sh is invoked, which will then create the proper device node in your /dev/ directory.