That is done by the filesystem in which your device file is. Say for example you have /dev/lp1 in root filesystem which is ext3. When this file is created in the filesystem, major and minor number are put in the disk inode. When you open this file using open system call, ext3 filesystem reads this info from disk inode and calls some routines to intialize file_operations struct for the incore inode to some general device file operations. These general device file operations eventually find the device corresponding to major number and call the device specific open routines. I hope that clears your doubt. cheers, Manu On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 16:56:26 +0500, Zeeshan Ali <zeenix@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hello, > Whenever i open the device /dev/lpN, the kernel automatically loads > the appropriate driver for that device, as if it has a list of major > number to module mapping. How/where does the kernel do it? > ---------------- Manu Garg http://manugarg.freezope.org -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
