Device Manager
A device manager is a program that manages device files in the /dev directory. Permissions and changes in /dev are handled by it.
Alpine linux has several device managers available:
- mdev (from busybox) is the default.
- mdevd is standalone, compatible with mdev, more efficient.
- eudev is a complex, full-featured one.
udev is not available in Alpine Linux, since it depends on systemd which is not available. Use eudev instead. Setting up eudev as device manager on a desktop system is recommended. The alpine-conf package provides setup-devd script to easily install and setup device managers.
To set up eudev, issue the command:
# setup-devd udev
Do I need a device manager?
Yes! Even for very specific use cases you would most likely just create a custom device manager.