xref: /freebsd/sbin/mknod/mknod.8 (revision 06064893b3c62c648518be78604fac29fc0d9d61)
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28.\"     @(#)mknod.8	8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
29.\" $FreeBSD$
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31.Dd December 29, 2003
32.Dt MKNOD 8
33.Os
34.Sh NAME
35.Nm mknod
36.Nd build special file
37.Sh SYNOPSIS
38.Nm
39.Ar name
40.Op Cm c | Cm b
41.Ar major minor
42.Op Ar owner : Ns Ar group
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44The
45.Nm
46utility creates device special files.
47To make nodes manually, the four required arguments are:
48.Pp
49.Bl -tag -width indent
50.It Ar name
51Device name, for example
52.Dq sd
53for a SCSI disk on an HP300 or a
54.Dq pty
55for pseudo-terminals.
56.It Cm b | Cm c
57Type of device.
58If the
59device is a block type device such as a tape or disk drive which needs
60both cooked and raw special files,
61the type is
62.Cm b .
63All other devices are character type devices, such as terminal
64and pseudo devices, and are type
65.Cm c .
66.It Ar major
67The major device number is an integer number which tells the kernel
68which device driver entry point to use.
69To learn what
70major device number to use for a particular device, check
71.Pa /usr/src/sys/conf/majors .
72.It Ar minor
73The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit
74the node corresponds to on the device; for example,
75a subunit may be a file system partition
76or a tty line.
77.It Ar owner : Ns Ar group
78The
79.Ar owner
80.Ar group
81operand pair is optional, however, if one is specified, they both must be
82specified.
83The
84.Ar owner
85may be either a numeric user ID or a user name.
86If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a
87user name.
88The
89.Ar group
90may be either a numeric group ID or a group name.
91Similar to the user name,
92if a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a
93group name.
94.El
95.Pp
96Major and minor device numbers can be given in any format acceptable to
97.Xr strtoul 3 ,
98so that a leading
99.Ql 0x
100indicates a hexadecimal number, and a leading
101.Ql 0
102will cause the number to be interpreted as octal.
103.Pp
104The
105.Nm
106utility can be used to recreate deleted device nodes under a
107.Xr devfs 5
108mount point by invoking it using dummy arguments.
109Example:
110.Pp
111.Dl "mknod cd0 c 0 0"
112.Pp
113where
114.Dq Li cd0
115is the name of the deleted device node.
116.Sh COMPATIBILITY
117The
118.Xr chown 8 Ns - Ns
119like functionality is specific to
120.Fx .
121.Sh SEE ALSO
122.Xr mkfifo 1 ,
123.Xr mknod 2 ,
124.Xr chown 8
125.Sh HISTORY
126A
127.Nm
128utility appeared in
129.At v6 .
130