a prolly not quite accurate description, but safe from a users veiw: devices in /dev are referenced by the kernel by their major-minor numbers. these can be found with 'ls -la'... "crw-rw---- 1 root root 108, 0 Jul 22 1999 /dev/ppp" the 108 is the major, the 0 is the minor.. the 108 is the type of device, while the minor it like the sucessive number of that class.. so basically, you an positivily identify any dev by its major-minor. where this really comes into play as a 'user', are error messages like "PANIC: unable to mount root fs 2,0" (or whatever that error is.heh) then, by looking at the major-minors in /dev, you could see that the kernel is trying to mount the floppy and could fix it by rdev'ing the kernel your trying to boot off of. anyway.. for programming info associated with the major-minor's, look at like the Coffee-HOWTO and the Serial-Programming-HOWTO, they both discuss this in alot more detail. -- ======================================================================== Rocky McGaugh Atipa Linux Solutions Linux Systems Engineer www.atipa.com rocky@smluc.org rmcgaugh@atipa.com ======================================================================== On Fri, 21 Jan 2000, Venkat Swaminathan wrote:
Where would I find information about char-major-xxx, etc.? I find people saying things like "set char-major-108 off to fix your problem" and stuff like that. How do I get to know what char-major-xxx to use for serial, parallel, IDE, etc.? What is a char-major-...?
Is the related information on the SuSE CDs? Any books?
Thanks
-venkat
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