xref: /freebsd/sbin/mknod/mknod.8 (revision d37ea99837e6ad50837fd9fe1771ddf1c3ba6002)
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28.\"     @(#)mknod.8	8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
29.\" $FreeBSD$
30.\"
31.Dd December 29, 2003
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 c | Cm b
41.Ar major minor
42.Op Ar owner : Ns Ar group
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44The
45.Nm
46utility creates device special files.
47To make nodes manually, the four required arguments are:
48.Pp
49.Bl -tag -width indent
50.It Ar name
51Device name, for example
52.Dq sd
53for a SCSI disk on an HP300 or a
54.Dq pty
55for pseudo-terminals.
56.It Cm b | Cm c
57Type of device.
58If the
59device is a block type device such as a tape or disk drive which needs
60both cooked and raw special files,
61the type is
62.Cm b .
63All other devices are character type devices, such as terminal
64and pseudo devices, and are type
65.Cm c .
66.It Ar major
67The major device number is an integer number which tells the kernel
68which device driver entry point to use.  To learn what
69major device number to use for a particular device, check
70.Pa /usr/src/sys/conf/majors .
71.It Ar minor
72The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit
73the node corresponds to on the device; for example,
74a subunit may be a file system partition
75or a tty line.
76.It Ar owner : Ns Ar group
77The
78.Ar owner
79.Ar group
80operand pair is optional, however, if one is specified, they both must be
81specified.
82The
83.Ar owner
84may be either a numeric user ID or a user name.
85If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a
86user name.
87The
88.Ar group
89may be either a numeric group ID or a group name.
90Similar to the user name,
91if a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a
92group name.
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.Pp
103The
104.Nm
105utility can be used to recreate deleted device nodes under a
106.Xr devfs 5
107mount point by invoking it using dummy arguments.
108Example:
109.Pp
110.Dl "mknod cd0 c 0 0"
111.Pp
112where
113.Dq Li cd0
114is the name of the deleted device node.
115.Sh COMPATIBILITY
116The
117.Xr chown 8 Ns - Ns
118like functionality is specific to
119.Fx .
120.Sh SEE ALSO
121.Xr mkfifo 1 ,
122.Xr mknod 2 ,
123.Xr chown 8
124.Sh HISTORY
125A
126.Nm
127utility appeared in
128.At v6 .
129