ChorusOS 4.0 File System Administration Guide

2.3.2 Naming Conventions for Special Files

Special files normally reside in the /dev directory, which is mounted at boot time. By convention, special file names follow the form /dev/rsuffix for raw (character) mode and /dev/suffix for buffered (block) mode.

The suffix is made up of:


Caution - Caution -

Special care must be taken with partition c. Partition c represents the whole disk and therefore must not be used to support a file system.


As file systems are based on BSD 4.4 as implemented in FreeBSD 2.2.7, the same limitations found in FreeBSD 2.2.7 apply to ChorusOS file system management. According to limitations imposed by FreeBSD, a disk can be divided into a maximum of eight different partitions for IDE and SCSI devices, two partitions for RAM and flash devices. Partitions can be left undefined. Partitions are named using a single character in the range from a to h, each letter corresponding to one of the eight partitions for IDE and SCSI devices. For RAM and flash devices, only partitions a and c are available.