Visser, Martin wrote:
Of course I have found most of my *specific* answers at
http://acecad.sourceforge.net/README . But it stills doesn't help me
with the *generic* issue of mapping physical device, how they are seen
through facilities such as dmesg and /var/log/messages, and even
usbview, and how one *knows* which /dev/device to specify.
Dmesg obtains info from kernel ring buffer. Kernel ring buffer gets updated each time the kernel discovers hardware and/or driver(software or module).
As to how kernel discovers hardware and updates kernel ring buffer is a black art.
This might be done by reading from specific hardware address and figuring out the device from any data read. This might be done by writing some patterns into specific hardware addresses, and see what happens.
Some, kernel components are software-only. For example, TCP/IP or File Systems.
Once these kernel components are loaded, info is written to the kernel ring buffer that can be displayed using dmesg.
Some tools that one may use to load and unload modules:
insmod modprobe rmmod depmod
Also check /etc/modprobe.conf.
Regarding, /var/log/messages check:
# man syslog.conf
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