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.\" @(#)mknod.8 8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93 29.\" 30.Dd October 3, 2016 31.Dt MKNOD 8 32.Os 33.Sh NAME 34.Nm mknod 35.Nd build special file 36.Sh SYNOPSIS 37.Nm 38.Ar name 39.Nm 40.Ar name 41.Op Cm b | c 42.Ar major minor 43.Op Ar owner : Ns Ar group 44.Sh DESCRIPTION 45.Bf -symbolic 46The 47.Nm 48utility is deprecated on modern 49.Fx 50systems. 51.Ef 52.Pp 53The 54.Nm 55utility creates device special files. 56To make nodes manually, the arguments are: 57.Bl -tag -width indent 58.It Ar name 59Device name, for example 60.Pa /dev/da0 61for a SCSI disk or 62.Pa /dev/pts/0 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. 77.It Ar minor 78The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit 79the node corresponds to on the device; for example, 80a subunit may be a file system partition 81or a tty line. 82.It Ar owner : Ns Ar group 83The 84.Ar owner 85.Ar group 86operand pair is optional, however, if one is specified, they both must be 87specified. 88The 89.Ar owner 90may be either a numeric user ID or a user name. 91If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a 92user name. 93The 94.Ar group 95may be either a numeric group ID or a group name. 96Similar to the user name, 97if a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a 98group name. 99.El 100.Pp 101Major and minor device numbers can be given in any format acceptable to 102.Xr strtoul 3 , 103so that a leading 104.Ql 0x 105indicates a hexadecimal number, and a leading 106.Ql 0 107will cause the number to be interpreted as octal. 108.Pp 109The 110.Nm 111utility can be used to recreate deleted device nodes under a 112.Xr devfs 5 113mount point by invoking it with only a filename as an argument. 114Example: 115.Pp 116.Dl "mknod /dev/cd0" 117.Pp 118where 119.Pa /dev/cd0 120is the name of the deleted device node. 121.Sh COMPATIBILITY 122The 123.Xr chown 8 Ns - Ns 124like functionality is specific to 125.Fx . 126.Pp 127As of 128.Fx 4.0 , 129block devices were deprecated in favour of character 130devices. 131As of 132.Fx 5.0 , 133device nodes are managed by the device file system 134.Xr devfs 5 , 135making the 136.Nm 137utility superfluous. 138As of 139.Fx 6.0 140device nodes may be created in regular file systems but such 141nodes cannot be used to access devices. 142.Sh SEE ALSO 143.Xr mkfifo 1 , 144.Xr mknod 2 , 145.Xr devfs 5 , 146.Xr chown 8 147.Sh HISTORY 148A 149.Nm 150utility appeared in 151.At v4 . 152