DEV.4
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- .TH DEV 4
- .SH NAME
- dev - device files in /dev
- .SH DESCRIPTION
- Device files are the eyes and ears of the system. Through the device files
- one has access to the disks, terminals and other parts of the machine.
- Single bytes or disk blocks may be transferred to or from a device with
- ordinary
- .BR read (2)
- or
- .BR write (2)
- calls, byte positions set with
- .BR lseek (2),
- or more complicated control functions performed with
- .BR ioctl(2).
- .PP
- Device files as found in
- .B /dev
- have several attributes that must be considered. Here are two examples as
- .B "ls -l"
- shows them:
- .PP
- .RS
- .nf
- .if t .ft C
- brw-rw-rw- 1 root operator 2, 1 Jun 10 1995 fd1
- crw--w---- 1 kjb tty 4, 0 May 11 09:41 console
- .if t .ft P
- .fi
- .RE
- .PP
- Most attributes are the same as for a regular file and have the same
- function. The file type and the major and minor device numbers are special
- to devices.
- .PP
- Character devices are marked with a
- .B c
- as a file type letter. Any I/O on a character device is sent down to the
- device driver without any interpretation. This means that a process doing
- the I/O must know the characteristics of the device and deal with them
- appropriately.
- .PP
- Block devices provoke the file system server into buffering the data on
- those devices. Data read or written by processes is passed through the file
- system block cache. Unaligned bytes read or written are extracted or
- reassembled by the file server from or to whole blocks in the cache. The
- file server transfers data to or from the device driver as blocks to
- positions at block size boundaries. These blocks are Minix blocks of 1024
- bytes, disk devices usually have a 512 byte block size. Only block devices
- can be mounted as part of the file system tree if they contain a Minix file
- system.
- .PP
- The major device number (2 for
- .B fd1
- and 4 for
- .BR console )
- are used by FS to find the device driver that manages a device. The minor
- device number (1 for
- .B fd1
- and 0 for
- .BR console )
- is passed to the driver to select a device among a number of related devices
- that are all managed by that driver. The device drivers are usually kernel
- tasks under Minix, small processes that are contained within the address
- space of the kernel. The following tasks and associated devices exist:
- .SS "Memory (major 1)"
- The
- .BR ram ,
- .BR mem ,
- .BR kmem ,
- and
- .BR null
- devices are managed by the memory task.
- The
- .B ram
- device is a block device for a chunk of memory that is the RAM disk. Any
- byte read from or written to the
- .B ram
- device is copied from or to that memory chunk.
- The
- .B mem
- device is a character device for the entire address space of the system, but
- .B kmem
- only for the kernel data area. These two devices allow programs like
- .BR ps (1)
- to hunt around the system looking for interesting bits.
- The
- .B null
- device is a data sink. It happily swallows any bytes written to it, and
- returns nothing on a read.
- .SS "Floppy disk (major 2)"
- The
- .BR fd0 ,
- .BR fd0a ,
- .BR fd0b ,
- .BR fd0c ,
- and
- .BR fd0d
- block devices are the first floppy disk and the four partitions that may
- exist on a that floppy disk. Likewise are
- .BR fd1
- and
- .BR fd1[a-d]
- the device and partitions for the second floppy disk. The floppy disk
- devices are described in detail in
- .BR fd (4).
- Partitioning in general is explained in
- .BR hd (4).
- .SS "Hard disk (major 3)"
- The first hard disk can be accessed by block device
- .BR hd0 .
- This device addresses the entire hard disk from the first to the last
- sector. A hard disk is normally partitioned in up to four primary
- partitions,
- .BR hd1 ,
- .BR hd2 ,
- .BR hd3 ,
- and
- .BR hd4 .
- Each of these devices accesses a range of sectors on the
- .B hd0
- device. It is customary to give each operating system on a disk a primary
- partition. So the MS-DOS C: "drive" can be on
- .BR hd1 ,
- and Minix can be on
- .BR hd2 .
- Minix wants to have several partitions on its own, so
- .B hd2
- can be further subdivided into the subpartitions
- .BR hd2a ,
- .BR hd2b ,
- .BR hd2c ,
- and
- .BR hd2d .
- .B /dev
- contains devices for the first and second hard disk
- .RB ( hd0
- and
- .BR hd5 )
- their primary partitions
- .RB ( hd[1-46-9] )
- and subpartitions thereof
- .RB ( hd[1-46-9][a-d] ).
- More detail can be found in
- .BR hd (4).
- .SS "Terminals (minor 4)"
- The TTY driver manages the system console device, aptly named
- .BR console ,
- the serial lines,
- .BR tty00
- and
- .BR tty01 ,
- and the pseudo ttys.
- Through the console device one can display characters on a screen attached
- to a monochrome, Hercules, color, or VGA adapter. The
- .BR ttyc1 ,
- .BR ttyc2 ,
- etc. devices are the so-called "virtual consoles" that share the one
- console display. One can select which virtual console is to be visible on
- the screen and take input from the keyboard.
- To allow remote login the devices with minor numbers of 128 or higher offer
- virtual terminals. These pseudo ttys come in tty, pty pairs that form a
- pipe between processes running under the tty, and a controlling process
- attached to the pty side.
- See also
- .BR console (4),
- and
- .BR tty (4).
- .SS "Anonymous TTY (major 5)"
- This is just one device named
- .BR tty
- that is a synonym for the controlling tty of a process. This device is not
- managed by any device driver, but is handled by FS itself. A process can
- get access to the terminal it is running under by using
- .BR /dev/tty .
- .SS "Line printer (major 6)"
- The
- .B lp
- device sends any bytes written to it to the printer.
- .SS "TCP/IP (major 7)"
- The TCP/IP task is not a kernel task, but a server like MM and FS. It sits
- between FS and the DP8390 task that manages the ethernet boards. Together
- they implement the TCP/IP protocol. See also
- .BR ip (4).
- .SS "CD-ROM (major 8)"
- This is the CD-ROM driver for the Mitsumi proprietary CD-ROM interface. The
- .BR cd0
- device addresses the whole CD, with extra
- .BR cd[1-4]
- and
- .BR cd[1-4][a-d]
- devices for if the CD also contains partitions with Minix file systems.
- .SS "SCSI disks and tapes (major 10)"
- The
- .B sd*
- devices are disks in the same way as the
- .B hd*
- devices. Except that these disks are SCSI disks attached to an Adaptec
- 1540 controller or compatible. The driver also manages the
- .B rst*
- and
- .B nrst*
- tape devices (rewinding or non-rewinding). See
- .BR sd (4).
- .SS "Audio (major 13)"
- The
- .B audio
- device can be used to produce or record air vibrations using a Soundblaster
- 16 type audio card. See
- .BR audio (4).
- .SS "Mixer (major 14)"
- The
- .B mixer
- device is used to control the audio driver.
- .SH FILES
- .TP 10
- .B /dev/*
- All Minix devices
- .SH "SEE ALSO"
- .BR read (2),
- .BR write (2),
- .BR lseek (2),
- .BR ioctl (2),
- .BR console (4),
- .BR fd (4),
- .BR hd (4),
- .BR ip (4),
- .BR sd (4),
- .BR tty (4),
- .BR MAKEDEV (8).
- .SH DIAGNOSTICS
- There are five prominent errors that processes accessing device files may
- provoke:
- .IP "ENODEV - No such device" 5
- There is no driver managing the device class this device belongs to. Either
- the driver is configured out, or it is not loaded (inet).
- .IP "ENXIO - No such device or address"
- This device is not available. Either the driver does not support it at all,
- or the hardware isn't available, i.e. accessing the second disk on a system
- with only one disk.
- .IP "EACCES - Permission denied"
- This error may cause a lot of head scratching if
- .B ls -l
- shows a device file to be writable. The media you are trying to access is
- simply physically write protected!
- .IP "EINVAL - Invalid argument"
- Devices may not like reads or writes that are not block multiples, or very
- big transfers, etc. The device manual page should list the limits.
- .IP "EIO - I/O error"
- This may be a real I/O error, i.e. a read or write on the device failing due
- to a media error. But it may also be the result of an operation that a
- device can't do, or an empty tape drive, etc.
- .SH NOTES
- Some devices are not present by default. The
- .BR MAKEDEV
- script knows how to make them.
- .SS "MS-DOS equivalents"
- The names of MS-DOS devices map to Minix devices as follows:
- .PP
- .RS
- .nf
- .ta +10n +16n
- A: fd0
- B: fd1
- C: hd1, sd1 (usually the first partition)
- D: hd6, sd1, sd6 (or an extended partition)
- CON console
- COM1 tty00 (UNIX counts from 0)
- LPT1 lp
- .fi
- .RE
- .SH AUTHOR
- Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)