Re: What happened to network devices?
On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 11:55:11PM +0100, James Youngman wrote:
> > So what did you use instead? I have never had trouble with using
> > "eth0" or "/dev/eth0" before, so I didn't check if such a file
> > existed. A network interface is a device which I expect to be
> > represented under /dev.
>
> Not so, at least on Linux.
Well, all devices are supposed to be available under /dev.
> Network interfaces are not represented as
> any kind of file (and specifically not as device special files) on
> Linux.
Why not? Afair they used to be --- and even if not, I'd expect them to
be represented under /dev because all devices are supposed to be
represented there.
> For example, you cannot use open(2) or rename(2) on eth0.
It wouldn't make much sense if you could, would it?
> I've heard (mostly long ago, certainly before 1996) about Linux-based
> systems where interfaces also have nodes under /dev, but I've never
> heard of one where this is necessary.
Afair I started using Linux before 1996. Somehow, I expect /dev/eth0
to be there as a matter of course. That's probably where it was last
time I looked.
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