I was writing an spi driver, and taking a look into spidev.c, I see the the author allocates a linked list to hold driver data instances. From open it iterates over the list comparing two dev_t fields, one from current element on list other from struct inode * parameter, here is the lines: static int spidev_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp) { struct spidev_data *spidev; int status = -ENXIO; mutex_lock(&device_list_lock); list_for_each_entry(spidev, &device_list, device_entry) { if (spidev->devt == inode->i_rdev) { status = 0; break; } } ... Now it set the filp->private data to its driver data, and on read and write file operations he knows how to access is driver data, I was looking for a simpler strategy, on my module I would have same devices on distinct spi busses and chipselects, but it wouldn't go greater than 9 devices. I need to access spi_device struct pointer for the right device from read and write file operations. Isn't there any path from struct file *filp to struct device *devp created with device_create? I can't see it, but if is possible I can set device private data from my probe function. Cheers,