17. Devices and Modules
In this chapter, we discuss four kernel components related to device drivers and device management:
• Device types—Classifications used in all Unix systems to unify behavior of common devices
• Modules—The mechanism by which the Linux kernel can load and unload object code on demand
• Kernel objects—Support for adding simple object-oriented behavior and a parent/child relationship to kernel data structures
• Sysfs—A filesystem representation of the system’s device tree
Device Types
In Linux, as with all Unix systems, devices are classified into one of three types:
• Block devices
• Character devices
• Network devices
Often abbreviated blkdevs, block devices are addressable in device-specified chunks called blocks and ...
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