Re: Sticky bit on device files?

[Peter Lebbing <peter@digitalbrains.com>]

Grepping the debian udev source gives:

udev/udevd.c:
udev/udev-rules.c:
udev/udev-event.c:
/* set sticky bit, so we do not remove the node on module unload */

And in line 426-429 of udev/udev-node.c, version 175-3, function
int udev_node_remove(struct udev_device *dev):

if (stats.st_mode & 01000) {
        info(udev, "device node '%s' has sticky bit set, skip removal\n", devnode);
        goto out;
}

I think the idea is that if a kernel module is unloaded, or perhaps more
generally, on an udev "remove" action, the device file in the /dev directory is
kept. udev_node_remove() is only called from the function
udev_event_execute_rules().

So perhaps the sticky bit means nothing to, say, the kernel, and udev gives its
own purpose and interpretation to it.

But this is conjecture.

Peter.

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