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, use eudev instead which includes patches to make to work better without other systemd components.
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.