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.Pp 59.Bl -tag -width indent 60.It Ar name 61Device name, for example 62.Pa /dev/da0 63for a SCSI disk or 64.Pa /dev/pts/0 65for pseudo-terminals. 66.It Cm b | c 67Type of device. 68If the 69device is a block type device such as a tape or disk drive which needs 70both cooked and raw special files, 71the type is 72.Cm b . 73All other devices are character type devices, such as terminal 74and pseudo devices, and are type 75.Cm c . 76.It Ar major 77The major device number is an integer number which tells the kernel 78which device driver entry point to use. 79.It Ar minor 80The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit 81the node corresponds to on the device; for example, 82a subunit may be a file system partition 83or a tty line. 84.It Ar owner : Ns Ar group 85The 86.Ar owner 87.Ar group 88operand pair is optional, however, if one is specified, they both must be 89specified. 90The 91.Ar owner 92may be either a numeric user ID or a user name. 93If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a 94user name. 95The 96.Ar group 97may be either a numeric group ID or a group name. 98Similar to the user name, 99if a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a 100group name. 101.El 102.Pp 103Major and minor device numbers can be given in any format acceptable to 104.Xr strtoul 3 , 105so that a leading 106.Ql 0x 107indicates a hexadecimal number, and a leading 108.Ql 0 109will cause the number to be interpreted as octal. 110.Pp 111The 112.Nm 113utility can be used to recreate deleted device nodes under a 114.Xr devfs 5 115mount point by invoking it with only a filename as an argument. 116Example: 117.Pp 118.Dl "mknod /dev/cd0" 119.Pp 120where 121.Pa /dev/cd0 122is the name of the deleted device node. 123.Sh COMPATIBILITY 124The 125.Xr chown 8 Ns - Ns 126like functionality is specific to 127.Fx . 128.Pp 129As of 130.Fx 4.0 , 131block devices were deprecated in favour of character 132devices. 133As of 134.Fx 5.0 , 135device nodes are managed by the device file system 136.Xr devfs 5 , 137making the 138.Nm 139utility superfluous. 140As of 141.Fx 6.0 142device nodes may be created in regular file systems but such 143nodes cannot be used to access devices. 144.Sh SEE ALSO 145.Xr mkfifo 1 , 146.Xr mknod 2 , 147.Xr devfs 5 , 148.Xr chown 8 149.Sh HISTORY 150A 151.Nm 152utility appeared in 153.At v6 . 154