what is major and minor?

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what is major and minor?..

Major number
============
A number indicating which device driver should be used to
access a particular device. All devices controlled by the
same device driver have a common major device number.

Minor number
============
A number serving as a flag to a device driver.The minor
device numbers are used to distinguish between different
devices and their controllers.

Eg:

# ls -l /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 2008-09-04 08:28 /dev/sda1
rigel:~# ls -l /dev/sda2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 2 2008-09-04 08:28 /dev/sda2

You can see the major and minor device number (8,1) and
(8,2) in the ls listing for /dev/sdax

# ls -l /dev/scd0
brw-rw---- 1 root cdrom 11, 0 2008-09-04 08:28 /dev/scd0

You can see the major and minor device number (11,0)in the
ls listing for /dev/scd0

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what is major and minor?..

Answer / shanmugam

Major - os reference

Minor - Partition Numbers

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