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From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Subject: [TUHS] Device special files
Date: Tue,  6 Feb 2018 20:38:25 -0500 (EST)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20180207013825.2222218C0A4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> (raw)

    > From: Greg Lehey

    >> V3 and earlier still *called* them special files, but it seems they
    >> were essentially just magic inode numbers (there was no physical file
    >> on disk, just any directory entry with the given inode would be the
    >> special file).

    > Isn't that still the case?

From reading the manual page (URL sent earlier), in V3 and before it really
was just an inode _number_ (less than 50, IIRC). The first inode, in the
first disk block after the super-block, was inode #51. This is of course
different from later Versions, where there is an _inode_ for devices, but
still no actual _file_.

	Noel



             reply	other threads:[~2018-02-07  1:38 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 32+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2018-02-07  1:38 Noel Chiappa [this message]
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2018-02-09  0:09 Doug McIlroy
2018-02-06 15:56 ron minnich
2018-02-06 17:56 ` Larry McVoy
2018-02-06 18:03   ` ron minnich
2018-02-06 19:48 ` Random832
2018-02-07  1:25   ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2018-02-07  1:36     ` Ron Natalie
2018-02-07  1:40       ` Clem Cole
2018-02-07  1:47         ` Henry Bent
2018-02-07  1:48     ` Dave Horsfall
2018-02-07  2:06       ` Dan Cross
2018-02-07 16:24         ` Arthur Krewat
2018-02-07 16:34           ` Dan Cross
2018-02-07 16:34           ` Nemo
2018-02-07 16:59             ` ron minnich
2018-02-08  0:39           ` Dave Horsfall
2018-02-08 16:18             ` Arthur Krewat
2018-02-08 22:47               ` Dave Horsfall
2018-02-07  2:13       ` Bakul Shah
2018-02-07  5:39         ` Dave Horsfall
2018-02-07 18:36           ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2018-02-07 19:07             ` Ian Zimmerman
2018-02-07 22:05               ` Clem Cole
2018-02-07 22:38                 ` ron minnich
2018-02-07 22:48                 ` Ron Natalie
2018-02-08 18:59                   ` Random832
2018-02-07 23:06                 ` Bakul Shah
2018-02-08 19:06               ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2018-02-07 22:04             ` Dave Horsfall
2018-02-08 13:03               ` Rafael R Obelheiro
2018-02-08 19:25               ` Steffen Nurpmeso

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