20.5 Debugging udev Events

The program udevmonitor can be used to visualize the driver core events and the timing of the udev event processes.

UEVENT[1132632714.285362] add@/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb2/2-2
UEVENT[1132632714.288166] add@/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0
UEVENT[1132632714.309485] add@/class/input/input6
UEVENT[1132632714.309511] add@/class/input/input6/mouse2
UEVENT[1132632714.309524] add@/class/usb_device/usbdev2.12
UDEV  [1132632714.348966] add@/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb2/2-2
UDEV  [1132632714.420947] add@/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0
UDEV  [1132632714.427298] add@/class/input/input6
UDEV  [1132632714.434223] add@/class/usb_device/usbdev2.12
UDEV  [1132632714.439934] add@/class/input/input6/mouse2

The UEVENT lines show the events the kernel has sent over netlink. The UDEV lines show the finished udev event handlers. The timing is printed in microseconds. The time between UEVENT and UDEV is the time udev took to process this event or the udev daemon has delayed its execution to synchronize this event with related and already running events. For example, events for hard disk partitions always wait for the main disk device event to finish, because the partition events may rely on the data the main disk event has queried from the hardware.

udevmonitor --env shows the complete event environment:

UDEV  [1132633002.937243] add@/class/input/input7
UDEV_LOG=3
ACTION=add
DEVPATH=/class/input/input7
SUBSYSTEM=input
SEQNUM=1043
PHYSDEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0
PHYSDEVBUS=usb
PHYSDEVDRIVER=usbhid
PRODUCT=3/46d/c03e/2000
NAME="Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse"
PHYS="usb-0000:00:1d.1-2/input0"
UNIQ=""
EV=7
KEY=70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
REL=103

udev also sends messages to syslog. The default syslog priority that controls which messages are sent to syslog is specified in the udev configuration file /etc/udev/udev.conf. The log priority of the running daemon can be changed with udevcontrol log_priority=level/number.