Hardware support

HAL - Hardware Abstraction Layer, runs as a demon (hald).

dBus - communication of HAL with Task Manager

uDev - discovering of devices and registering them to /dev/canon, /dev/usb

Sys filesystem (/sys) - this is where HAL keeps its' DB of devices, info on them, serials, where they are connected, how they are connected etc. uDev makes them available for software.

Proc filesystem (/proc) - where kernel keeps all running commands. Created in RAM when computer boots. It is created every time a computer boots.

It is possible to read & write there, but changes are temporary.

• Only ROOT user can write to it.

cat /proc/mounts  # shows all mounted drives and filesystems

lsmod, lspci, lsusb Commands

lsmod - shows kernel modules

lspci - shows PCI devices

lsusb - shows connected USB devices

Managing devices

rmmod - remove kernel module from running kernel

insmod - insert kernel module, outdated since it does not have history

modprobe - used for probing dependencies and inserting missing stuff in the running kernel

EX: rmmod vmxnet3          # delete virtual NIC

       modprobe vmxnet3  # search for missing NIC and insert it

Device ID - UUID

In order to mount different HDD to use as folders like:

/home

/root

/var

UUID can be used to uniquely mount HDD.