1DEVICE_RENAME(9)         Device drivers infrastructure        DEVICE_RENAME(9)
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NAME

6       device_rename - renames a device
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SYNOPSIS

9       int device_rename(struct device * dev, const char * new_name);
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ARGUMENTS

12       dev
13           the pointer to the struct device to be renamed
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15       new_name
16           the new name of the device
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DESCRIPTION

19       It is the responsibility of the caller to provide mutual exclusion
20       between two different calls of device_rename on the same device to
21       ensure that new_name is valid and won't conflict with other devices.
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NOTE

24       Don't call this function. Currently, the networking layer calls this
25       function, but that will change. The following text from Kay Sievers
26       offers
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SOME INSIGHT

29       Renaming devices is racy at many levels, symlinks and other stuff are
30       not replaced atomically, and you get a “move” uevent, but it's not easy
31       to connect the event to the old and new device. Device nodes are not
32       renamed at all, there isn't even support for that in the kernel now.
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34       In the meantime, during renaming, your target name might be taken by
35       another driver, creating conflicts. Or the old name is taken directly
36       after you renamed it -- then you get events for the same DEVPATH,
37       before you even see the “move” event. It's just a mess, and nothing new
38       should ever rely on kernel device renaming. Besides that, it's not even
39       implemented now for other things than (driver-core wise very simple)
40       network devices.
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42       We are currently about to change network renaming in udev to completely
43       disallow renaming of devices in the same namespace as the kernel uses,
44       because we can't solve the problems properly, that arise with swapping
45       names of multiple interfaces without races. Means, renaming of
46       eth[0-9]* will only be allowed to some other name than eth[0-9]*, for
47       the aforementioned reasons.
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49       Make up a “real” name in the driver before you register anything, or
50       add some other attributes for userspace to find the device, or use udev
51       to add symlinks -- but never rename kernel devices later, it's a
52       complete mess. We don't even want to get into that and try to implement
53       the missing pieces in the core. We really have other pieces to fix in
54       the driver core mess. :)
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57Kernel Hackers Manual 3.10         June 2019                  DEVICE_RENAME(9)
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