[Novalug] Device naming.

[Bryan J. Smith]

The "/dev/sr*" block devices should be your default for read-only or
most ATAPI, SCSI, etc... optical drive firmware access.

Additionally, if the firmware supports character (byte-by-byte) access,
then they also get "/dev/sg*" character devices.

In a few, select cases -- depending on the firmware -- some devices
will also be assigned a "/dev/sd*" read/write block device as well.


-- Bryan

P.S.  These are all due to the firmware of the devices, not Linux.  NT
has the same issues.  E.g., Sony/Philips DVD+RW firmware does not
support character modes.

But at least it's well standardized, especially /dev/sr* on newer kernel/
distro releases.  The former mesh of sd/sr v. hd (the latter which could
be optical or fixed disk, no differentiation) was an even worse situation.



----- Original Message ----
From: Ed James <edward.james at gmail.com>

   One of my "fun projects" has been writing Java, then GTK+ GUIs to "directly"
access hardware via ioctl.  This allows me to click a GUI button to "UNLOCK
DRIVE DOOR", "OPEN TRAY", "CLOSE TRAY", "LOCK DRIVE DOOR",
"DISPLAY UPC", etc.  The program works on devices such as "/dev/cdrom",
"media/USB1", "dev'/fd0", etc.

   So, questions are, am I obsolete now because I refer to device names such
as "/dev/cdrom"?  I use old boxen, old RedHat installs because they do what
I want (for now).  How should I be "addressing" devices today, should I
decide to upgrade, and how would this make my life nicer?  Please don't
read anything into the questions, just take them literally.