Upon receiving a uevent (“U-event”), udev (“U-dev”) loads one of these programs by calling modprobe with the contents of MODALIAS (“mod-alias”). In cooked mode, one of these programs passes input to a line discipline, which then sends data to another one of these programs, as explained in the article “The TTY demystified.” These programs define a table of function pointers, usually including poll and select, in accordance with the file_operations (“file-operations”) struct. Pairs of major and minor numbers identify interfaces to these programs called special files. Whether these programs transmit data byte-by-byte in order or whether they send data as randomly accessed chunks determines if they are classified as “character” or “block.” Although these programs can be implemented in user space, traditionally they are kernel modules that control I/O (“I-O”). For 10 points, name these programs used by operating systems to communicate with hardware devices. ■END■
ANSWER: device drivers [or Linux device drivers; accept TTY drivers or UART (“U-art”) drivers; prompt on kernel modules until “modules”; reject “kernels”]
<Other Science>
= Average correct buzz position