DEVICE_RENAME(9) Device drivers infrastructure DEVICE_RENAME(9)NAMEdevice_rename - renames a device
SYNOPSIS
int device_rename(struct device * dev, const char * new_name);
ARGUMENTS
dev
the pointer to the struct device to be renamed
new_name
the new name of the device
DESCRIPTION
It is the responsibility of the caller to provide mutual exclusion
between two different calls of device_rename on the same device to
ensure that new_name is valid and won't conflict with other devices.
NOTE
Don't call this function. Currently, the networking layer calls this
function, but that will change. The following text from Kay Sievers
offers
SOME INSIGHT
Renaming devices is racy at many levels, symlinks and other stuff are
not replaced atomically, and you get a “move” uevent, but it's not easy
to connect the event to the old and new device. Device nodes are not
renamed at all, there isn't even support for that in the kernel now.
In the meantime, during renaming, your target name might be taken by
another driver, creating conflicts. Or the old name is taken directly
after you renamed it -- then you get events for the same DEVPATH,
before you even see the “move” event. It's just a mess, and nothing new
should ever rely on kernel device renaming. Besides that, it's not even
implemented now for other things than (driver-core wise very simple)
network devices.
We are currently about to change network renaming in udev to completely
disallow renaming of devices in the same namespace as the kernel uses,
because we can't solve the problems properly, that arise with swapping
names of multiple interfaces without races. Means, renaming of
eth[0-9]* will only be allowed to some other name than eth[0-9]*, for
the aforementioned reasons.
Make up a “real” name in the driver before you register anything, or
add some other attributes for userspace to find the device, or use udev
to add symlinks -- but never rename kernel devices later, it's a
complete mess. We don't even want to get into that and try to implement
the missing pieces in the core. We really have other pieces to fix in
the driver core mess. :)
COPYRIGHTKernel Hackers Manual 3.11 November 2013 DEVICE_RENAME(9)
