Devfs

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.
This article has been tagged since January 2007.
The correct title of this article is devfs. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

devfs is an umbrella term for special-purpose file systems present on many Unix-like operating systems, used for presenting device files, an abstraction for accessing I/O and other peripherals.

Contents

[edit] Rationale

Maintaining these special files on a general-purpose file system is inconvenient, and as it needs kernel assistance anyway, the idea of a special-purpose file system that is not stored on disk arose.

[edit] Implementations

Operating System File system's name Standard mount-point Author Notes
Linux >=2.4 && <2.6.18 devfs /dev Richard Gooch Implemented fully in the kernel. OBSOLETED: Users are encouraged to migrate to udev.
Linux >=2.6.15 udev /dev Greg Kroah-Hartman, Kay Sievers and Dan Stekloff Implemented largely in user space, device information is gathered from sysfs. Device files can be stored on a conventional general-purpose file system, or in a memory file system (tmpfs).
Solaris devfs /devices Sun Microsystems
FreeBSD >=2.0 devfs /dev  ? Implemented fully in the kernel.
Mac OS X devfs /dev  ? Implemented fully in the kernel.
Plan 9 #  ? Implemented in kernel. Can not be mounted elsewhere or unmounted.
Operating System File system's name Standard mount-point Author Notes

[edit] Appendix

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

[edit] See also

[edit] References

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since September 2006.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../d/e/v/Devfs.html"