Hello !

It is my first time posting a question and I appreciate if someone can help me about with my questions.

I am now trying to find out how MAC address of network device is loaded to kernel.

OS I am using is Cent OS 6.8 64 bit .

I see that whenever device is inserted , kernel automatically recognizes the device and stores information under

/sys/class/net/xxx


Questions I would like to ask are,

Q1 Is

/sys/class/net/xxx

created by udevd when the device is inserted to the server?

Q2 ip link command shows that Layer 2 information is automatically loaded. Below is the example of usb network device.

[root@base ~]# ip link show enp0s20u1
33: enp0s20u1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT qlen 1000
link/ether 74:03:bd:3d:ac:84 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
How is above information loaded into kernel? Is there a process that loads it from the /sys/class/net/xxx through udev database?

Thank you for reading.

If it is a USB device (of any sort ...) then the "hotplug" mechanism that will be activated first. Upon receipt of a "device inserted" notification, it queries the manufacturer and device-type information signature to determine what sort of device it is, then executes appropriate scripts to fully configure it.

If you poke around a bit, you can find the exact script that is executed.

Most likely, a kernel module is selected and loaded, and it actually communicates with the device to retrieve the MAC address and so forth. Hotplug is a user side utility that runs with root privileges.

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Thank you for the reply!