Instance Names

Instance names refer to the nth device in the system (for example, sd20).

Instance names are occasionally reported in driver error messages. You can determine the binding of an instance name to a physical name by looking at dmesg(1M) output, as in the following example.

sd9 at esp2: target 1 lun 1
sd9 is /sbus@1,f8000000/esp@0,800000/sd@1,0
     <SUN0424 cyl 1151 alt 2 hd 9 sec 80>

Once the instance name has been assigned to a device, it remains bound to that device.

Instance numbers are encoded in a device's minor number. To keep instance numbers persistent across reboots, the system records them in the /etc/path_to_inst file. This file is read only at boot time, and is currently updated by the add_drv(1M) and drvconfig(1M) commands. See the path_to_inst(4) man page for more information.