Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 20:15:47 -0300 (ART) From: Fernando Gleiser <fgleiser@cactus.fi.uba.ar> To: "Weston M. Price" <wmprice@direcway.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Character Devices vs. Block Devices Message-ID: <20021001201058.D81915-100000@cactus.fi.uba.ar> In-Reply-To: <200210011612.08538.wmprice@direcway.com>
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On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, Weston M. Price wrote: > So, given this, I am assuming that hard drives are treated as raw devices > exclusively? That is, no intermediate buffers are maintained between the user > process and the device: Nope, there is buffering for the file system interface. I dont remember the exact reasons for nuking the block devices, but I think it has to do with the new VM subsystem and the integrated buffer cache/VM, but my memory may be failing. If you want a more acurate answer, search the archives for -hackers and -current > > Is this valid on FreeBSD? Nope. The book was written before FreeBSD nuked block devices. Fer > > Regard, > > Weston > > On Tuesday 01 October 2002 03:19 pm, Weston M. Price wrote: > > Hello, > > A quick ls of my dev directory revealed that each one of my hard drives is > > considered a character device by the system. Example: > > > > crw-r----- 2 root operator 116, 0x00010002 Aug 19 16:09 /dev/ad0 > > crw-r----- 2 root operator 116, 0 Aug 19 16:09 /dev/ad0a > > crw-r----- 2 root operator 116, 1 Aug 19 16:09 /dev/ad0b > > crw-r----- 2 root operator 116, 2 Aug 19 16:09 /dev/ad0c > > crw-r----- 2 root operator 116, 3 Aug 19 16:09 /dev/ad0d > > crw-r----- 2 root operator 116, 4 Aug 19 16:09 /dev/ad0e > > crw-r----- 2 root operator 116, 5 Aug 19 16:09 /dev/ad0f > > crw-r----- 2 root operator 116, 6 Aug 19 16:09 /dev/ad0g > > crw-r----- 2 root operator 116, 7 Aug 19 16:09 /dev/ad0h > > > > What I am confused about, aren't hard drives treated as block devices on > > most systems? What am I missing? > > > > Regards, > > > > Weston > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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