DEV(4) Kernel Interfaces Manual DEV(4)
NAME
dev - device files in /dev
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 read(2) or write(2) calls, byte positions set
with lseek(2), or more complicated control functions performed with ioctl(2).
Device files as found in /dev have several attributes that must be considered. Here are two examples as ls -l shows them:
brw-rw-rw- 1 root operator 2, 1 Jun 10 1995 fd1
crw--w---- 1 kjb tty 4, 0 May 11 09:41 console
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.
Character devices are marked with a 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.
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.
The major device number (2 for fd1 and 4 for console) are used by FS to find the device driver that manages a device. The minor device
number (1 for fd1 and 0 for 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:
Memory (major 1)
The ram, mem, kmem, and null devices are managed by the memory task. The ram device is a block device for a chunk of memory that is the
RAM disk. Any byte read from or written to the ram device is copied from or to that memory chunk. The mem device is a character device
for the entire address space of the system, but kmem only for the kernel data area. These two devices allow programs like ps(1) to hunt
around the system looking for interesting bits. The null device is a data sink. It happily swallows any bytes written to it, and returns
nothing on a read.
Floppy disk (major 2)
The fd0, fd0a, fd0b, fd0c, and fd0d block devices are the first floppy disk and the four partitions that may exist on a that floppy disk.
Likewise are fd1 and fd1[a-d] the device and partitions for the second floppy disk. The floppy disk devices are described in detail in
fd(4). Partitioning in general is explained in hd(4).
Hard disk (major 3)
The first hard disk can be accessed by block device 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, hd1, hd2, hd3, and hd4. Each of these devices accesses a range of sec-
tors on the 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
hd1, and Minix can be on hd2. Minix wants to have several partitions on its own, so hd2 can be further subdivided into the subpartitions
hd2a, hd2b, hd2c, and hd2d. /dev contains devices for the first and second hard disk (hd0 and hd5) their primary partitions (hd[1-46-9])
and subpartitions thereof (hd[1-46-9][a-d]). More detail can be found in hd(4).
Terminals (minor 4)
The TTY driver manages the system console device, aptly named console, the serial lines, tty00 and 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 ttyc1, 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 termi-
nals. 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 console(4), and tty(4).
Anonymous TTY (major 5)
This is just one device named 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 /dev/tty.
Line printer (major 6)
The lp device sends any bytes written to it to the printer.
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 ip(4).
CD-ROM (major 8)
This is the CD-ROM driver for the Mitsumi proprietary CD-ROM interface. The cd0 device addresses the whole CD, with extra cd[1-4] and
cd[1-4][a-d] devices for if the CD also contains partitions with Minix file systems.
SCSI disks and tapes (major 10)
The sd* devices are disks in the same way as the hd* devices. Except that these disks are SCSI disks attached to an Adaptec 1540 con-
troller or compatible. The driver also manages the rst* and nrst* tape devices (rewinding or non-rewinding). See sd(4).
Audio (major 13)
The audio device can be used to produce or record air vibrations using a Soundblaster 16 type audio card. See audio(4).
Mixer (major 14)
The mixer device is used to control the audio driver.
FILES
/dev/* All Minix devices
SEE ALSO
read(2), write(2), lseek(2), ioctl(2), console(4), fd(4), hd(4), ip(4), sd(4), tty(4), MAKEDEV(8).
DIAGNOSTICS
There are five prominent errors that processes accessing device files may provoke:
ENODEV - No such device
There is no driver managing the device class this device belongs to. Either the driver is configured out, or it is not loaded (inet).
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 sec-
ond disk on a system with only one disk.
EACCES - Permission denied
This error may cause a lot of head scratching if ls -l shows a device file to be writable. The media you are trying to access is sim-
ply physically write protected!
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.
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.
NOTES
Some devices are not present by default. The MAKEDEV script knows how to make them.
MS-DOS equivalents
The names of MS-DOS devices map to Minix devices as follows:
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
AUTHOR
Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)
DEV(4)