How do I view a character device in Linux?

In Linux, to get a character device for a disk, one must use the “raw” driver, though one can get the same effect as opening a character device by opening the block device with the Linux-specific O_DIRECT flag.

What are block devices in Linux?

On Linux, network block device (NBD) is a network protocol that can be used to forward a block device (typically a hard disk or partition) from one machine to a second machine. As an example, a local machine can access a hard disk drive that is attached to another computer.