xref: /freebsd/sbin/mknod/mknod.8 (revision 7f3dea244c40159a41ab22da77a434d7c5b5e85a)
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32.\"     @(#)mknod.8	8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
33.\" $FreeBSD$
34.\"
35.Dd December 11, 1993
36.Dt MKNOD 8
37.Os BSD 4
38.Sh NAME
39.Nm mknod
40.Nd build special file
41.Sh SYNOPSIS
42.Nm mknod
43.Ar name
44.Op Cm c | Cm b
45.Ar major minor
46.Sh DESCRIPTION
47The
48.Nm mknod
49command creates device special files.
50Normally the shell script
51.Pa /dev/MAKEDEV
52is used to create special files for commonly known devices; it executes
53.Nm
54with the appropriate arguments and can make all the files required for the
55device.
56.Pp
57To make nodes manually, the four required arguments are:
58.Pp
59.Bl -tag -width indent
60.It Ar name
61Device name, for example
62.Dq sd
63for a SCSI disk on an HP300 or a
64.Dq pty
65for pseudo-devices.
66.It Cm b | Cm c
67Type of device. If the
68device is a block type device such as a tape or disk drive which needs
69both cooked and raw special files,
70the type is
71.Cm b .
72All other devices are character type devices, such as terminal
73and pseudo devices, and are type
74.Cm c .
75.It Ar major
76The major device number is an integer number which tells the kernel
77which device driver entry point to use.  To learn what
78major device number to use for a particular device, check the file
79.Pa /dev/MAKEDEV
80to see if the device is known, or check
81the system dependent device configuration file:
82.Bd -filled -offset indent
83.Dq Pa /usr/src/sys/conf/device. Ns Em architecture
84.Ed
85.Pp
86(for example
87.Pa device.hp300 ) .
88.It Ar minor
89The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit
90the node corresponds to on the device; for example,
91a subunit may be a filesystem partition
92or a tty line.
93.El
94.Pp
95Major and minor device numbers can be given in any format acceptable to
96.Xr strtoul 3 ,
97so that a leading
98.Ql 0x
99indicates a hexadecimal number, and a leading
100.Ql 0
101will cause the number to be interpreted as octal.
102.Sh SEE ALSO
103.Xr mkfifo 1 ,
104.Xr mknod 2 ,
105.Xr MAKEDEV 8
106.Sh HISTORY
107A
108.Nm
109command appeared in
110.At v6 .
111