Components of the Device-Allocation Mechanism

The components of the allocation mechanism that you must understand in order to manage device allocation are:

• The allocate, deallocate, dminfo, and list_devices commands

• The /etc/security/device_allocate file (see the device_allocate(4) man page)

• The /etc/security/device_maps file (see the device_maps(4) man page)

• The lock files that must exist for each allocatable device in /etc/security/dev

• The changed attributes of the device-special files that are associated with each allocatable device

• Device-clean scripts for each allocatable device

How any user invokes the allocate, deallocate, dminfo, and list_devices commands is described in "Using the Device-Allocation Utilities". All of the options and other descriptions are defined in the man pages.

The device_allocate file, the device_map file, and the lock files are specific to each machine. The configuration files are not administered as NIS databases because tape drives, diskette drives, and the printers are all connected to specific machines.