I have a device which is shows up in kinfocenter, but does not have a device in /dev/ (how do you differentiate between the two, are they both called devices?). So, how do I assign a device to a /dev/ device? Also, how does kinfocenter work? Where is it getting the info for the devices? Is it doing some sort of hardware probe everytime I start it, or is there some other list of devices somewhere? (I read the kinfocenter manual and it didn't have any such information).

The particular device in question is a cell phone which can be used as a modem and uses the cdc-acm module. Most posts I have read about the subject say to "modprobe cdc-acm" and then they use /dev/ttyACM0, but there is no ttyACM0 in /dev/ for me.

There are a number of ways to find out about hardware, it all depends on what it is. What follows is what i know, they are all done from the cli.

lspci this will tell you about stuff on your pci bus

lsusb this one will tell you about stuff connected to a usb port. one thing about this is that a usb port is generally connected to the pci bus, so the usb controller will show up on the output of lspci but the devices connected to it will show on lsusb.

hcitool this will tell you about stuff connected to the bluetooth system. The same principal applies here as for usb. The bluetooth adaptor will show up in either lspci or lsusb (depending on what type it is) but devices connected to it will show in hcitool.

You need to be more specific as to how you have your mobile phone connected to your system as there are different ways of accessing it.

Also you do not state which kernel series you are using. As they deal with hardware in different way. Most probably th easiest one to use it on of the 2.6 series along with udev. When this setup is working properly it will create the required /dev nodes for you

Thanks for the info. I'm going to go check those out! My phone is connected via USB. Kernel is 2.6. When I plug in the phone, /var/log/messages spits out a whole bunch of stuff (I have tail -f on), including that the cdc-acm module is registered. All the how-tos that I've read about this say that on their /var/log/messages right after the acm module is loaded follows "ttyACM0: USB ACM Device". So, my guess is that whatever makes that message which I'm not getting is also what makes the /dev/ttyACM0 device, and it's happening automatically for others, but I have to go and make it happen. I just don't know how.