Device name
Alternatively referred to as a device file or special file, a device name is an identification given to the physical hardware device assigned by the operating system. A device name provides an interface to peripheral devices such as parallel and serial port or access to a disk partitions. Below, is a listing of Linux device names in the /dev hierarchy.
| Name | Description |
| fb | Frame buffer |
| fd | floppy diskette or file descriptor. |
| hd | IDE driver, ATA hard drive, or ATAPI optical disc drive |
| hda | Master ATA device |
| hdb | Slave ATA device |
| hdc | Master ATA device on the second channel. An example of how this may be listed: hdc1, which indicates first partition on master ATA device. |
| lp | Printer |
| parport, pp | Parallel ports |
| pt | Pseudeo-terminal (virtual terminal) |
| sd | SCSI mass-storage driver |
| sda | First registered SCSI device. An example of how this may be listed: sda4, which indicates the last partition on the first registered SCSI device. |
| ses | SCSI enclosure driver |
| sg | Generic SCSI layer |
| sr | SCSI ROM driver |
| st | SCSI tape driver |
| tty | Terminal |
| ttyS | Terminal serial port driver |
| ttyUSB | Terminal USB serial converter |
Tip: MS-DOS and Windows users should see our reserved word definition for a listing of the device file names.
Also see: Operating System, Reserved word