Documentation/admin-guide/devices.txt
Source file repositories/reference/linux-study-clean/Documentation/admin-guide/devices.txt
File Facts
- System
- Linux kernel
- Corpus path
Documentation/admin-guide/devices.txt- Extension
.txt- Size
- 106521 bytes
- Lines
- 3083
- Domain
- Support Tooling And Documentation
- Bucket
- Documentation
- Inferred role
- Support Tooling And Documentation: documentation
- Status
- atlas-only
Why This File Exists
Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.
- Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.
Dependency Surface
- No C-style include directives detected by the generator.
Detected Declarations
- No top-level syscall, struct, function, initcall, or export declaration detected by the generator.
Annotated Snippet
0 Unnamed devices (e.g. non-device mounts)
0 = reserved as null device number
See block major 144, 145, 146 for expansion areas.
1 char Memory devices
1 = /dev/mem Physical memory access
2 = /dev/kmem OBSOLETE - replaced by /proc/kcore
3 = /dev/null Null device
4 = /dev/port I/O port access
5 = /dev/zero Null byte source
6 = /dev/core OBSOLETE - replaced by /proc/kcore
7 = /dev/full Returns ENOSPC on write
8 = /dev/random Nondeterministic random number gen.
9 = /dev/urandom Faster, less secure random number gen.
10 = /dev/aio Asynchronous I/O notification interface
11 = /dev/kmsg Writes to this come out as printk's, reads
export the buffered printk records.
12 = /dev/oldmem OBSOLETE - replaced by /proc/vmcore
1 block RAM disk
0 = /dev/ram0 First RAM disk
1 = /dev/ram1 Second RAM disk
...
250 = /dev/initrd Initial RAM disk
Older kernels had /dev/ramdisk (1, 1) here.
/dev/initrd refers to a RAM disk which was preloaded
by the boot loader; newer kernels use /dev/ram0 for
the initrd.
2 char Pseudo-TTY masters
0 = /dev/ptyp0 First PTY master
1 = /dev/ptyp1 Second PTY master
...
255 = /dev/ptyef 256th PTY master
Pseudo-tty's are named as follows:
* Masters are "pty", slaves are "tty";
* the fourth letter is one of pqrstuvwxyzabcde indicating
the 1st through 16th series of 16 pseudo-ttys each, and
* the fifth letter is one of 0123456789abcdef indicating
the position within the series.
These are the old-style (BSD) PTY devices; Unix98
devices are on major 128 and above and use the PTY
master multiplex (/dev/ptmx) to acquire a PTY on
demand.
2 block Floppy disks
0 = /dev/fd0 Controller 0, drive 0, autodetect
1 = /dev/fd1 Controller 0, drive 1, autodetect
2 = /dev/fd2 Controller 0, drive 2, autodetect
3 = /dev/fd3 Controller 0, drive 3, autodetect
128 = /dev/fd4 Controller 1, drive 0, autodetect
129 = /dev/fd5 Controller 1, drive 1, autodetect
130 = /dev/fd6 Controller 1, drive 2, autodetect
131 = /dev/fd7 Controller 1, drive 3, autodetect
To specify format, add to the autodetect device number:
0 = /dev/fd? Autodetect format
4 = /dev/fd?d360 5.25" 360K in a 360K drive(1)
20 = /dev/fd?h360 5.25" 360K in a 1200K drive(1)
48 = /dev/fd?h410 5.25" 410K in a 1200K drive
64 = /dev/fd?h420 5.25" 420K in a 1200K drive
24 = /dev/fd?h720 5.25" 720K in a 1200K drive
80 = /dev/fd?h880 5.25" 880K in a 1200K drive(1)
8 = /dev/fd?h1200 5.25" 1200K in a 1200K drive(1)
40 = /dev/fd?h1440 5.25" 1440K in a 1200K drive(1)
56 = /dev/fd?h1476 5.25" 1476K in a 1200K drive
72 = /dev/fd?h1494 5.25" 1494K in a 1200K drive
Annotation
- Atlas domain: Support Tooling And Documentation / Documentation.
- Implementation status: atlas-only.
Implementation Notes
- This generated page is the file-by-file coverage layer; curated subsystem chapters should link here when they synthesize a multi-file control flow.
- Core OS pages should be promoted from atlas-only to deep-reviewed when they explain data structures, invariants, locking, lifecycle, and C implementation snippets.
- Driver-family pages are intentionally pattern-oriented unless they are part of the selected PCIe/NVMe representative device path.