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I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to you because I am attempting to format and partition a drive in OpenBSD but have been met with the following message:

virtual-server# fdisk /dev/sd1c        
fdisk: /dev/sd1c is not a character device
virtual-server# lsblk
NAME   SIZE TYPE   COMMENT          
sd0     50G SCSI   Block Device     
├─sd0a 1.0G 4.2BSD /                
├─sd0b 1.2G swap                    
├─sd0c  50G unused                  
├─sd0d 3.2G 4.2BSD /tmp             
├─sd0e 5.1G 4.2BSD /var             
├─sd0f 5.3G 4.2BSD /usr             
├─sd0g 1.0G 4.2BSD /usr/X11R6       
├─sd0h 6.8G 4.2BSD /usr/local       
├─sd0i 2.2G 4.2BSD /usr/src         
├─sd0j 6.0G 4.2BSD /usr/obj         
└─sd0k  17G 4.2BSD /home            
sd1    100G SCSI   Block Device     
└─sd1c 100G unused                  
virtual-server#

What does fdisk: /dev/sd1c is not a character device mean? I cannot find the error listed elsewhere but wanted to better understand what the issue is.

Note: lsblk is installed from the package manager.

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  • 1
    what if you fdisk /dev/sd1 Commented Aug 12, 2024 at 0:16
  • @JaromandaX /dev/sd1 does not exist. virtual-server# fdisk /dev/sd1 fdisk: opendev('/dev/sd1', 0x0): No such file or directory virtual-server# Commented Aug 12, 2024 at 1:14
  • that's odd. lsblk clearly states that sd1 is a block device. I'm assuming BSD (I haven't used it in 20 years) the physical devices are sd0, sd1 etc, and the partitions are the ones with letters after the 0, 1 etc? of course, the is not a character device error looks really odd Commented Aug 12, 2024 at 1:31
  • 2
    Are you saying that /dev/sd1c exists, but that /dev/sd1 does not exist? Commented Aug 12, 2024 at 5:13
  • That's not a 1, That's an L but lowercase. I'd bet you a hole in a donut sd1 doesn't exist, but that sdl does. Or vice versa if you're typing an L it's a 1. Commented Aug 12, 2024 at 20:59

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tl;dr:  fdisk sd1

You are running the command fdisk /dev/sd1c (or fdisk /dev/sd1 as suggested in the comments).

/dev/sd1 is the absolute path to the block device interface for sd1. A block interface provides a higher level abstraction for simplifying filesystem operations and is generally the way that most processes interact with storage media -- that is, once a medium has already been initialized with a filesystem.

fdisk, however, has different needs than most other processes, when it comes to storage media access. In order to be able to initialize a device with a filesystem in the first place, fdisk needs to have raw access to the individual bytes of a device instead of viewing it through 512-byte blocks. This raw access occurs through the character device interface of a device.

Most storage devices provide both interfaces: The block device for sdN is found at /dev/sdN and the character devices is at /dev/rsdN.

So if you were to run fdisk /dev/rsd1 you should find that you are able to proceed. fdisk is smart enough to infer the absolute path, so you can save a bit of typing just by doing: fdisk sd1

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  • Does this actually work on OpenBSD? Commented Oct 17, 2024 at 0:06

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