Coldplug is responsible for all devices connected before the hotplug system is enabled during the boot process. It also takes care of devices that are not easy to detect.

First, the script rccoldplug calls the command hwup for every static hardware configuration /etc/sysconfig/hardware/hwcfg-static-*. Then the scripts /etc/hotplug/*.rc search for devices not yet initialized and create hotplug events. For PCI devices there is both a positive and a negative list of device types which should be initialized or skipped coldplug. Detailed comments for this are contained in the file /etc/sysconfig/hotplug.

The scan scripts output one character on the screen for every device that has been checked, as follows: