Udev never ever works for me

Question

Udev is supposed to be so simple, but every time I play with it, I get edgy. Can somebody explain to me (in very very small words;)) why this is happening:
dusty:~ $ ls -l /dev/misc/nvram
crw-r----- 1 root kmem 10, 144 2008-12-01 19:23 /dev/misc/nvram
dusty:~ $ grep nvram /etc/udev/rules.d/00-custom.rules
KERNEL=="nvram", NAME="misc/%k", SYMLINK+="%k", GROUP="kmem", MODE="0660"
# I even changed it in arch.rules:
dusty:~ $ grep nvram /etc/udev/rules.d/81-arch.rules
KERNEL=="nvram", NAME="misc/%k", SYMLINK+="%k", GROUP="kmem", MODE="0660"
dusty:~ $ sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
dusty:~ $ ls -l /dev/misc/nvram
crw-r----- 1 root kmem 10, 144 2008-12-01 19:23 /dev/misc/nvram
If you can't see the problem immediately: I'm setting the MODE to 0660 in the udev rules, but the device is getting created with no write permissions for the group. Which is what I want --write permissions for the group.
I grepped the other rules files but nvram isn't set or reset in any of them.
I have a feeling I've overlooked something painfully obvious. Is there a log for this sort of thing?
Dusty

Answer 1

It looks as though the device is being created before my rules are executed... how can this be?
Dusty wrote:dusty:log $ sudo grep nvram messages.log | grep "Dec  4"
Dec  4 17:10:58 apoeiro udevadm[5082]: device 0x98ee9c0 has devpath '/class/misc/nvram'
Dec  4 17:10:58 apoeiro udevadm[5082]: device 0x98ee9c0 filled with db symlink data '/dev/nvram'
Dec  4 17:10:47 apoeiro udevd-event[1601]: rule applied, 'nvram' becomes 'nvram'
Dec  4 17:10:47 apoeiro udevd-event[1601]: no db file to read /dev/.udev/db/\x2fclass\x2fmisc\x2fnvram: No such file or directory
Dec  4 17:10:47 apoeiro udevd-event[1601]: mknod(/dev/nvram, 020640, (10,144)) 
Dec  4 17:10:47 udevd-event[1601]: chmod(/dev/nvram, 020640)
Dec  4 17:10:47 apoeiro udevd-event[1601]: chown(/dev/nvram, 0, 9)
Dec  4 17:10:47 apoeiro udevd-event[1601]: creating index: '/dev/.udev/names/char\x2f10:144/\x2fclass\x2fmisc\x2fnvram'
Dec  4 17:10:47 apoeiro udevd-event[1601]: create db link (nvram char/10:144)
Dec  4 17:10:47 apoeiro udevd-event[1601]: update symlink 'char/10:144' of '/class/misc/nvram'
Dec  4 17:10:47 apoeiro udevd-event[1601]: found '/class/misc/nvram' for 'char/10:144' 
Dec  4 17:10:47 udevd-event[1601]: compare (our own) priority of '/class/misc/nvram' 0 >= 0
Dec  4 17:10:47 apoeiro udevd-event[1601]: creating symlink '/dev/char/10:144' to '../nvram'
Dec  4 17:10:48 apoeiro udevd-event[2214]: rule applied, 'nvram' becomes 'nvram'
Dec  4 17:10:48 apoeiro udevd-event[2214]: found db symlink 
Dec  4 17:10:48 udevd-event[2214]: got db link node: 'nvram'
Dec  4 17:10:48 apoeiro udevd-event[2214]: removing index: '/dev/.udev/names/nvram/\x2fclass\x2fmisc\x2fnvram'
Dec  4 17:10:48 apoeiro udevd-event[2214]: removing index: '/dev/.udev/names/char\x2f10:144/\x2fclass\x2fmisc\x2fnvram' 
Dec  4 17:10:48 udevd-event[2214]: creating device node '/dev/nvram', major=10, minor=144, mode=0640, uid=0, gid=9
Dec  4 17:10:48 apoeiro udevd-event[2214]: preserve file '/dev/nvram', because it has correct dev_t
Dec  4 17:10:48 apoeiro udevd-event[2214]: creating index: '/dev/.udev/names/char\x2f10:144/\x2fclass\x2fmisc\x2fnvram'
Dec  4 17:10:48 apoeiro udevd-event[2214]: create db link (nvram char/10:144)
Dec  4 17:10:48 apoeiro udevd-event[2214]: creating index: '/dev/.udev/names/nvram/\x2fclass\x2fmisc\x2fnvram' 
Dec  4 17:10:48 udevd-event[2214]: update symlink 'char/10:144' of '/class/misc/nvram'
Dec  4 17:10:48 apoeiro udevd-event[2214]: found '/class/misc/nvram' for
'char/10:144' 
Dec  4 17:10:48 udevd-event[2214]: compare (our own) priority of '/class/misc/nvram' 0 >= 0
Dec  4 17:10:48 apoeiro udevd-event[2214]: 'char/10:144' with target 'nvram' has the highest priority 0, create it 
Dec  4 17:10:48 udevd-event[2214]: found existing symlink '/dev/char/10:144'
Dec  4 17:10:48 apoeiro udevd-event[2214]: preserve already existing symlink '/dev/char/10:144' to '../nvram'