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authorAlex Gronenwoud <alex@linuxfromscratch.org>2004-02-10 22:06:21 +0000
committerAlex Gronenwoud <alex@linuxfromscratch.org>2004-02-10 22:06:21 +0000
commit5cd6caad33aed7430be8c2f1612a053d8d51ffe4 (patch)
tree913c145766c62dbfd450c9ec37f67279dd39479f /chapter06/makedev.xml
parent418e6cc0ff44e3bbaf3386e20f523edc8a97bc3c (diff)
Another mix of minor text adjustments.
git-svn-id: http://svn.linuxfromscratch.org/LFS/trunk/BOOK@3247 4aa44e1e-78dd-0310-a6d2-fbcd4c07a689
Diffstat (limited to 'chapter06/makedev.xml')
-rw-r--r--chapter06/makedev.xml18
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 9 deletions
diff --git a/chapter06/makedev.xml b/chapter06/makedev.xml
index 59be742ce..271ebef80 100644
--- a/chapter06/makedev.xml
+++ b/chapter06/makedev.xml
@@ -27,14 +27,14 @@ contains only a shell script.</para>
chmod 754 /dev/make_devices</userinput></screen>
<para>Device nodes are special files: things that can generate or receive data.
-They usually correspond to physical pieces of hardware, and can be created by
-issuing commands of the form: <command>mknod -m mode name type major
+They usually correspond to physical pieces of hardware. Device nodes can be
+created by issuing commands of the form: <command>mknod -m mode name type major
minor</command>. In such a command, <emphasis>mode</emphasis> is the usual
octal read/write/execute permissions triplet, and <emphasis>name</emphasis> is
the name of the device file to be created. It may seem surprising, but the
device name is actually arbitrary, except that most programs rely on devices
such as <filename>/dev/null</filename> having their usual names. The remaining
-three parameters tell the kernel what piece of hardware the device node
+three parameters tell the kernel what device the node
actually refers to. The <emphasis>type</emphasis> is a letter, either b or c,
indicating whether the device is accessed in blocks (such as a hard disk) or
character by character (such as the console). And <emphasis>major</emphasis>
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ numbers for Linux can be found in the file <filename>devices.txt</filename> in
the <filename class="directory">Documentation</filename> subdirectory of the
kernel sources.</para>
-<para>Note that the same major/minor combination are usually assigned to both a
+<para>Note that the same major/minor combination is usually assigned to both a
block and a character device. These are, however, completely unrelated devices
that cannot be interchanged. A device is identified by the type/major/minor
triple, not just the major/minor pair, so when creating a device node it is
@@ -79,11 +79,11 @@ system.</para>
<para>If that didn't work either, the only option left is to create a few ptyXX
and ttyXX device nodes. To do this, open <filename>make_devices</filename> in
your editor, go to the section "Pseudo-TTY masters" and enable as many ptyXX
-devices as you think you will need (one for every active xterm, ssh connection,
-telnet connection, and so on). In the immediately following section "Pseudo-TTY
-slaves", enable the corresponding ttyXX devices. When you are done, rerun
-<command>./make_devices</command> from inside <filename>/dev</filename> to have
-it create the new devices.</para>
+devices as you think you will need (every xterm, ssh connection, telnet
+connection, and the like, uses one of these pseudo terminals). In the
+immediately following section "Pseudo-TTY slaves", enable the corresponding
+ttyXX devices. When you are done, rerun <command>./make_devices</command> from
+inside <filename>/dev</filename> to have it create the new devices.</para>
</sect2>