Re: extended partitions
Bob Lanning (lanning@tidbit.fhda.edu)
Mon, 9 Oct 1995 10:20:44 -0700 (PDT)
---- As written by David Holland:
> Pardon me, but what the *hell* are you talking about?
> Not what I am, obviously.
>
> /dev exists to support a mapping between device names (eg, hda1) and
> major/minor number pairs (eg, (3,1).)
>
> This mapping is maintained by MAKEDEV. Sort of. It's very easy for
> MAKEDEV to be wrong or just out of date. It's also very easy to have
> additional bogus devices lying around. The last Slackware I saw (which
> is not the most recent) had a few dozen bogus entries in /dev that
> didn't point to *any* device at all. What happens if you make an entry
> called "null" in /dev that's (3,1) instead of (1,3)? Anything
> accessing "/dev/null" actually trashes the first partition of the
> first IDE disk. This is not a good situation.
>
> If the names in /dev are generated directly by the kernel, like /proc
> is, this problem disappears.
And what about links like /dev/cdrom, /dev/modem, and /dev/mouse?
--
Robert Hajime Lanning lanning@tidbit.fhda.edu
"Back off, man! I'm a scientist."
-- Peter Venkman, "GhostBusters"
"Emotions are alien to me. I'm a scientist."
-- Spock, "This Side of Paradise", stardate 3417.3