1.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 5.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 6.\" are met: 7.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 8.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 9.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 10.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 11.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 12.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 13.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 14.\" without specific prior written permission. 15.\" 16.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 17.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 18.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 19.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 20.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 21.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 22.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 23.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 24.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 25.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 26.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 27.\" 28.Dd October 3, 2016 29.Dt MKNOD 8 30.Os 31.Sh NAME 32.Nm mknod 33.Nd build special file 34.Sh SYNOPSIS 35.Nm 36.Ar name 37.Nm 38.Ar name 39.Op Cm b | c 40.Ar major minor 41.Op Ar owner : Ns Ar group 42.Sh DESCRIPTION 43.Bf -symbolic 44The 45.Nm 46utility is deprecated on modern 47.Fx 48systems. 49.Ef 50.Pp 51The 52.Nm 53utility creates device special files. 54To make nodes manually, the arguments are: 55.Bl -tag -width indent 56.It Ar name 57Device name, for example 58.Pa /dev/da0 59for a SCSI disk or 60.Pa /dev/pts/0 61for pseudo-terminals. 62.It Cm b | c 63Type of device. 64If the 65device is a block type device such as a tape or disk drive which needs 66both cooked and raw special files, 67the type is 68.Cm b . 69All other devices are character type devices, such as terminal 70and pseudo devices, and are type 71.Cm c . 72.It Ar major 73The major device number is an integer number which tells the kernel 74which device driver entry point to use. 75.It Ar minor 76The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit 77the node corresponds to on the device; for example, 78a subunit may be a file system partition 79or a tty line. 80.It Ar owner : Ns Ar group 81The 82.Ar owner 83.Ar group 84operand pair is optional, however, if one is specified, they both must be 85specified. 86The 87.Ar owner 88may be either a numeric user ID or a user name. 89If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a 90user name. 91The 92.Ar group 93may be either a numeric group ID or a group name. 94Similar to the user name, 95if a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a 96group name. 97.El 98.Pp 99Major and minor device numbers can be given in any format acceptable to 100.Xr strtoul 3 , 101so that a leading 102.Ql 0x 103indicates a hexadecimal number, and a leading 104.Ql 0 105will cause the number to be interpreted as octal. 106.Pp 107The 108.Nm 109utility can be used to recreate deleted device nodes under a 110.Xr devfs 5 111mount point by invoking it with only a filename as an argument. 112Example: 113.Pp 114.Dl "mknod /dev/cd0" 115.Pp 116where 117.Pa /dev/cd0 118is the name of the deleted device node. 119.Sh COMPATIBILITY 120The 121.Xr chown 8 Ns - Ns 122like functionality is specific to 123.Fx . 124.Pp 125As of 126.Fx 4.0 , 127block devices were deprecated in favour of character 128devices. 129As of 130.Fx 5.0 , 131device nodes are managed by the device file system 132.Xr devfs 5 , 133making the 134.Nm 135utility superfluous. 136As of 137.Fx 6.0 138device nodes may be created in regular file systems but such 139nodes cannot be used to access devices. 140.Sh SEE ALSO 141.Xr mkfifo 1 , 142.Xr mknod 2 , 143.Xr devfs 5 , 144.Xr chown 8 145.Sh HISTORY 146A 147.Nm 148utility appeared in 149.At v4 . 150