Random Access Memory (RAM) is a block device, why Linux uses a character device file instead of a block device file for user-processes to interface with /dev/mem?
$ ls -l /dev/mem
crw-r----- 1 root kmem 1, 1 Jul 24 19:05 /dev/mem
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1 Answer
The answer is in the question: RAM isn’t a block device, it can be accessed and modified without constraints (physically) and doesn’t need any buffering.
/dev/mem on Linux is handled by drivers/char/mem.c which implements a number of character devices: /dev/mem, /dev/kmem (before 5.13), /dev/null, /dev/port, /dev/zero, /dev/full, /dev/random, /dev/urandom and /dev/kmsg.
answered Jul 25, 2017 at 9:50
