DRUM(4)

💖 DRUM(4) — like, the kernel interfaces manual page for drum 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to DRUM(4), straight out of the Kernel Interfaces Manual 🎀. this one's short but she's important, so let's get into it ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

drum — the paging device, no cap 🥁💅

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so, this file refers to the paging device that's currently in use by the system. that's the vibe 👑

and here's the fun little twist: it might actually just be a subdevice of one of the disk drivers 😭 like, it's not always its own separate thing. but!! in a system where paging is interleaved across multiple disk drives, it steps in as an indirect driver for all of those multiple drives 🦋. so it's giving main character energy, handling the whole squad.

🎀 FILES 🎀

• /dev/drum — the file itself, periodt 💫

🕰️ HISTORY 🕰️

the drum special file appeared in 3.0BSD — she's an icon, she's a legend, she's been here since 3.0BSD 🌈💜

💀 BUGS 💀

okay so there is one little caveat, ngl 🙈:

Reads from the drum are not allowed across the interleaving boundaries. ⚠️

but don't panic!! because these boundaries only show up every .5Mbytes or so, and the system never allocates blocks across the boundary anyway — so it's usually not a problem at all 🫶✨ lowkey a non-issue fr fr.

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 she's from Debian, dated June 5, 1993 — an absolute vintage queen 👑🌸 mwah, ily, go read your kernel docs 🎀🦋💅