Device Access Entry Points

Drivers for character and block devices export the cb_ops(9S) structure, which defines the driver entry points for block device access and character device access. Both types of drivers are required to support the open(9E) and close(9E) entry points. Block drivers are required to support strategy(9E), while character drivers can choose to implement whatever mix of read(9E), write(9E), ioctl(9E), mmap(9E), or devmap(9E) entry points is appropriate for the type of device. Character drivers can also support a polling interface through chpoll(9E). Asynchronous I/O is supported through aread(9E) and awrite(9E) for block drivers and those drivers that can use both block and character file systems.