The Device Directory /dev Linux has a special directory that contains files representing each attached
device: the appropriately named /dev directory. As your first introduction,
navigate to the /dev directory and then perform a long listing on it. You
should see something like Listing 10-1.
kali >
cd /dev kali >
ls -l total 0
crw------- 1 root root 10, 175 May 16 12:44 agpgart
crw------- 1 root root 10, 235 May 16 12:44 autofs
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 160 May 16 12:44 block
--
snip --
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 May 16 12:44 cdrom -> sr0
--
snip --
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 May 16 12:44 cpu
--
snip --
Listing 10-1: A long listing of the /dev
directory The devices are displayed in alphabetical order by default. You may
recognize some of the devices, such a cdrom and cpu, but others have
rather cryptic names. Each device on your system is represented by a file
in the /dev directory, including devices you’ve probably never used or even
realized existed. On the off chance you do, there is a device file waiting to
be used for it.
If you scroll down this screen a bit, you should see more listings of
devices. Of particular interest are the devices sda1, sda2, sda3, sdb, and
sdb1, which are usually the hard drive and its partitions and a USB flash
drive and its partitions.
--
snip --
brw-rw---- 1 root root 8, 0 May 16 12:44 sda
brw-rw---- 1 root root 8, 1 May 16 12:44 sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root root 8, 2 May 16 12:44 sda2
brw-rw---- 1 root root 8, 5 May 16 12:44 sda5
Filesystem and Storage Device Management
103 brw-rw---- 1 root root 8, 16 May 16 12:44 sdb
brw-rw---- 1 root root 8, 17 May 16 12:44 sdb1
--
snip --
Let’s take a closer look at these.
