DEV(4FS) File Systems DEV(4FS)

dev — Device name file system

The dev filesystem manages the name spaces of devices in the operating system. The global zone's instance of the dev filesystem is mounted during boot on /dev. This filesystem is colloquially called ‘sdev’ as a way to distinguish it from the devfs(4FS) filesystem mounted at /devices.

A subdirectory under /dev may have unique operational semantics. Most of the common device names under /dev are created automatically by devfsadm(8) Others, such as /dev/pts, /dev/net, and /dev/zvol are dynamic and reflect the operational state of the system. You can manually generate device names for newly attached hardware by invoking devfsadm(8) or implicitly, by indirectly causing a lookup or readdir operation in the filesystem to occur. For example, you can discover a disk that was attached when the system was powered down (and generate a name for that device) by invoking format(8).

In a non-global zone, the dev filesystem is also mounted at /dev; however, it is generally speaking read-only. Unlike in the global zone, a privileged user in a non-global zone cannot create directories or files, directories, or other objects within the filesystem.

/dev
Mount point for the dev filesystem in the global zone and non-global zones.

devfs(4FS), devfsadm(8), format(8)

The global /dev instance cannot be unmounted.

March 10, 2023 OmniOS