NAME

clone − open any major/minor device pair on a STREAMS drive

SYNOPSIS

/dev/clone

DESCRIPTION

clone is a STREAMS software driver that finds and opens an unused major/minor device on another STREAMS driver.  The major device number passed to clone during open corresponds to the clone driver and the minor device number corresponds to the target driver.  Each open results in a separate stream to a previously unused major/minor device. 

The clone driver consists solely of an open function.  This open function performs all of the necessary work so that subsequent system calls (including close(2)) require no further involvement of clone. 

clone will generate an ENXIO error, without opening the device, if the major/minor device number provided does not correspond to a valid major/minor device, or if the driver indicated is not a STREAMS driver. 

SEE ALSO

SunOS 5.1 STREAMS Programmer’s Guide

NOTES

Multiple opens of the same major/minor device cannot be done through the clone interface.  Executing stat(2) on the file system entry for a cloned device yields a different result from executing fstat() using a file descriptor obtained from opening the node.

SunOS 5.1/SPARC  —  Last change: 3 Jul 1990