4.11. Devices and Device Nodes

A device is a term used mostly for hardware-related activities in a system, including disks, printers, graphics cards, and keyboards. When FreeBSD boots, the majority of the boot messages refer to devices being detected. A copy of the boot messages are saved to /var/run/dmesg.boot.

Each device has a device name and number. For example, acd0 is the first IDE CD-ROM drive, while kbd0 represents the keyboard.

Most devices in a FreeBSD must be accessed through special files called device nodes, which are located in /dev.

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