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.\" 4. 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.\" @(#)mknod.8 8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93 29.\" $FreeBSD$ 30.\" 31.Dd December 15, 2004 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 b | c 41.Ar major minor 42.Op Ar owner : Ns Ar group 43.Sh DESCRIPTION 44.Bf -symbolic 45The 46.Nm 47utility is deprecated on modern 48.Fx 49systems. 50.Ef 51.Pp 52The 53.Nm 54utility creates device special files. 55To make nodes manually, the four required arguments are: 56.Pp 57.Bl -tag -width indent 58.It Ar name 59Device name, for example 60.Dq sd 61for a SCSI disk on an HP300 or a 62.Dq pty 63for pseudo-terminals. 64.It Cm b | c 65Type of device. 66If the 67device is a block type device such as a tape or disk drive which needs 68both cooked and raw special files, 69the type is 70.Cm b . 71All other devices are character type devices, such as terminal 72and pseudo devices, and are type 73.Cm c . 74.It Ar major 75The major device number is an integer number which tells the kernel 76which device driver entry point to use. 77To learn what 78major device number to use for a particular device, check 79.Pa /usr/src/sys/conf/majors . 80.It Ar minor 81The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit 82the node corresponds to on the device; for example, 83a subunit may be a file system partition 84or a tty line. 85.It Ar owner : Ns Ar group 86The 87.Ar owner 88.Ar group 89operand pair is optional, however, if one is specified, they both must be 90specified. 91The 92.Ar owner 93may be either a numeric user ID or a user name. 94If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a 95user name. 96The 97.Ar group 98may be either a numeric group ID or a group name. 99Similar to the user name, 100if a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a 101group name. 102.El 103.Pp 104Major and minor device numbers can be given in any format acceptable to 105.Xr strtoul 3 , 106so that a leading 107.Ql 0x 108indicates a hexadecimal number, and a leading 109.Ql 0 110will cause the number to be interpreted as octal. 111.Pp 112The 113.Nm 114utility can be used to recreate deleted device nodes under a 115.Xr devfs 5 116mount point by invoking it using dummy arguments. 117Example: 118.Pp 119.Dl "mknod cd0 c 0 0" 120.Pp 121where 122.Dq Li cd0 123is the name of the deleted device node. 124.Sh COMPATIBILITY 125The 126.Xr chown 8 Ns - Ns 127like functionality is specific to 128.Fx . 129.Pp 130As of 131.Fx 4.0 , 132block devices were deprecated in favour of character 133devices. 134As of 135.Fx 5.0 , 136device nodes are managed by the device file system 137.Xr devfs 5 , 138making the 139.Nm 140utility superfluous. 141As of 142.Fx 6.0 143device nodes may be created in regular file systems but such 144nodes cannot be used to access devices. 145.Sh SEE ALSO 146.Xr mkfifo 1 , 147.Xr mknod 2 , 148.Xr devfs 5 , 149.Xr chown 8 150.Sh HISTORY 151A 152.Nm 153utility appeared in 154.At v6 . 155