Understanding device support

Interix uses the null device named /dev/null. You can redirect input and output to and from /dev/null.

Interix includes terminal devices, which you can list with the tty(1) command. The controlling terminal is /dev/tty. Other terminals are named /dev/ttynxx, where xx is a numeric digit. Utilities such as xterm(1) use pseudo terminals. For more information on terminal devices, see Terminals and other devices.

Interix also supports tape devices. You can access tape devices by using the names /dev/tapex and /dev/ntapex, where x is a digit from 1 to 9. For example, the names /dev/tape0 and /dev/ntape0 refer to the same tape drive. You can use the name /dev/ntape0 when to open a tape drive in non-rewind mode.

To access a tape device in Interix, you must first install it through Windows Control Panel. If you have difficulty reading tapes, the problem might be the blocking factor or the block size. When writing tapes, systems derived from Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) have a default behavior that is different from the default behavior of System V-derived systems. For more information on tape devices, see Terminals and other devices. If you have difficulty reading a tape archive that was written on another system, see mt(1).