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 desktop systems is recommended in Alpine Linux. Without a fully functional device manager, users will not be able to connect to input devices. 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.