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In Linux, major and minor numbers are used to identify devices and their associated drivers. The major number is a more generic category, such as hard disks or input/output devices. The minor number is more specific, such as the bus the device is connected to. For example, /dev/null and /dev/zero are both managed by driver 1, while all the tty's and pty's are managed by driver 4.
You can find the major and minor numbers for a device by issuing the ls -l /dev/* command. The numbers are separated by a comma and appear in the device file entries before the date of last modification. Here are some examples of major numbers: 10, 1, and 4. Here are some examples of minor numbers: 0, 3, 5, 64-65, and 128-129. You can allocate major and minor numbers in two ways: Statically and Dynamically.
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