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 January 31, 2010 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.Nm 41.Ar name 42.Op Cm b | c 43.Ar major minor 44.Op Ar owner : Ns Ar group 45.Sh DESCRIPTION 46.Bf -symbolic 47The 48.Nm 49utility is deprecated on modern 50.Fx 51systems. 52.Ef 53.Pp 54The 55.Nm 56utility creates device special files. 57To make nodes manually, the arguments are: 58.Bl -tag -width indent 59.It Ar name 60Device name, for example 61.Pa /dev/da0 62for a SCSI disk or 63.Pa /dev/pts/0 64for pseudo-terminals. 65.It Cm b | c 66Type of device. 67If 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. 78.It Ar minor 79The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit 80the node corresponds to on the device; for example, 81a subunit may be a file system partition 82or a tty line. 83.It Ar owner : Ns Ar group 84The 85.Ar owner 86.Ar group 87operand pair is optional, however, if one is specified, they both must be 88specified. 89The 90.Ar owner 91may be either a numeric user ID or a user name. 92If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a 93user name. 94The 95.Ar group 96may be either a numeric group ID or a group name. 97Similar to the user name, 98if a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a 99group name. 100.El 101.Pp 102Major and minor device numbers can be given in any format acceptable to 103.Xr strtoul 3 , 104so that a leading 105.Ql 0x 106indicates a hexadecimal number, and a leading 107.Ql 0 108will cause the number to be interpreted as octal. 109.Pp 110The 111.Nm 112utility can be used to recreate deleted device nodes under a 113.Xr devfs 5 114mount point by invoking it with only a filename as an argument. 115Example: 116.Pp 117.Dl "mknod /dev/cd0" 118.Pp 119where 120.Pa /dev/cd0 121is the name of the deleted device node. 122.Sh COMPATIBILITY 123The 124.Xr chown 8 Ns - Ns 125like functionality is specific to 126.Fx . 127.Pp 128As of 129.Fx 4.0 , 130block devices were deprecated in favour of character 131devices. 132As of 133.Fx 5.0 , 134device nodes are managed by the device file system 135.Xr devfs 5 , 136making the 137.Nm 138utility superfluous. 139As of 140.Fx 6.0 141device nodes may be created in regular file systems but such 142nodes cannot be used to access devices. 143.Sh SEE ALSO 144.Xr mkfifo 1 , 145.Xr mknod 2 , 146.Xr devfs 5 , 147.Xr chown 8 148.Sh HISTORY 149A 150.Nm 151utility appeared in 152.At v6 . 153