The concept behind major and minor

Character devices are populated in the /dev directory. Do note that they are not only files present in that directory. A character device file is recognizable by its type, which we can display thanks to the ls -l command. Major and minor identify and tie the devices with the drivers. Let'sseehow it works by listing the content of the/devdirectory (ls -l /dev):

[...]
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 160 Mar 21 08:57 input
crw-r----- 1 root kmem 1, 2 Mar 21 08:57 kmem
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Mar 21 08:57 log -> /run/systemd/journal/dev-log
crw-rw---- 1 root disk 10, 237 Mar 21 08:57 loop-control
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 0 Mar 21 08:57 loop0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 1 Mar 21 08:57 loop1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 2 Mar 21 08:57 loop2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 3 Mar 21 08:57 loop3

Given the preceding excerpt, the first character of the first column identifies the file type. Possible values are:

• c: This is for character device files
• b: This is for block device file
• l...