| HP-UX creates special files for most devices it finds attached at the time the system boots. You may, however, have to create your own device files or, at a minimum, have to understand some device files that exist on your system, so the information in this chapter is important for every system administrator to know. A typical installation will have terminals, printers, a tape drive, a DVD drive, and so on. Some devices are "standard," meaning that they are HP products or third-party products officially supported by HP. You have to be careful here, though, because what may seem as if it should work may not work after all and may not be supported. Almost always you can find a way to get things working eventually, but beware of devices you may be adding that aren't supported and may cause you trouble. As you add additional peripherals to your system, you will have to either add device files manually or use SAM to create them for you. Most devices you add can be added through SAM. I find adding peripherals to be much like setting up networking; that is, I almost always use SAM, but I find it important to know what is going on in the background. As an example, you could add a printer to your system using SAM and never know what has been done to support the new printer. In the event that the printer does not work for some reason, you really can't begin troubleshooting the problem without an understanding of the device files. The following section is a general overview of device files. |