On 9/17/05, raja <vnagaraju@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > Will you please tell me > what exactly major and minor numbers mean in device drivers. > I am studying the Linux Device Drivers book by rubini.I can not > understand wht exactly they are ? > In simplest terms (mostly) Major number corresponds to a device and the device can have multiple sub-parts/devices, but the device has only one driver to handle all the sub-part/devices and these sub-parts/devices are denoted through minor numbers whereas the main device/driver has a single major number !!!! for example: (HDD) hda has major number of 3 and for its partitions (hda1,hda2 and so on) it has minor numbers representing them but there is only a single driver to handle main device (hda) and it sub-parts (hda1, hda2 and so on ...) -- Fawad Lateef -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
