mknod(8)

NAME

mknod - build special file

SYNOPSIS

mknod name [b | c] major minor [owner:group]

DESCRIPTION

The mknod utility is deprecated on modern FreeBSD systems.

The mknod utility creates device special files. To make

nodes manually,
the four required arguments are:

name Device name, for example ``sd'' for a SCSI disk on

an HP300 or a

``pty'' for pseudo-terminals.

b | c Type of device. If the device is a block type de

vice such as a

tape or disk drive which needs both cooked and raw

special files,
the type is b. All other devices are character type

devices,
such as terminal and pseudo devices, and are type c.

major The major device number is an integer number which

tells the ker

nel which device driver entry point to use. To

learn what major
device number to use for a particular device, check
/usr/src/sys/conf/majors.

minor The minor device number tells the kernel which sub

unit the node

corresponds to on the device; for example, a subunit

may be a
file system partition or a tty line.

owner:group

The owner group operand pair is optional, however,

if one is
specified, they both must be specified. The owner

may be either
a numeric user ID or a user name. If a user name is

also a
numeric user ID, the operand is used as a user name.

The group
may be either a numeric group ID or a group name.

Similar to the
user name, if a group name is also a numeric group

ID, the
operand is used as a group name.

Major and minor device numbers can be given in any format

acceptable to
strtoul(3), so that a leading `0x' indicates a hexadecimal

number, and a
leading `0' will cause the number to be interpreted as oc

tal.

The mknod utility can be used to recreate deleted device

nodes under a
devfs(5) mount point by invoking it using dummy arguments.

Example:

mknod cd0 c 0 0

where ``cd0'' is the name of the deleted device node.

COMPATIBILITY

The chown(8)-like functionality is specific to FreeBSD.

As of FreeBSD 4.0, block devices were deprecated in favour

of character
devices. As of FreeBSD 5.0, device nodes are managed by the

device file
system devfs(5), making the mknod utility superfluous. As

of FreeBSD 6.0
device nodes may be created in regular file systems but such

nodes cannot
be used to access devices.

SEE ALSO

mkfifo(1), mknod(2), devfs(5), chown(8)

HISTORY

A mknod utility appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.

BSD December 15, 2004

BSD