permissions -

[Paul W. Frields]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 03:05:45PM -0400, Bob Goodwin ~ Zuni, Virginia, USA wrote:
> 
> I spent the last half hour googling with no success. What does the
> "b" mean and how is it controlled?
> 
> [root at box10 bobg]# ll /dev/sdb*
> brw-rw----. 1 root disk 8, 16 Sep 23 14:36 /dev/sdb
> brw-rw----. 1 root disk 8, 17 Sep 23 14:36 /dev/sdb1

It means the file is a block device node.  Typically control of that
file/device is through a device driver.  In this case these are
respectively your second SCSI (or emulated SCSI, such as sATA) disk
device, and the first addressable partition on that device.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
  http://redhat.com/   -  -  -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
    The open source story continues to grow: http://opensource.com