MKNOD(8) OpenBSD System Manager's Manual MKNOD(8)NAMEmknod - make device special files
SYNOPSISmknod [-m mode] name b|c major minor
mknod [-m mode] name p
DESCRIPTION
The mknod command creates device special files. Normally the shell
script /dev/MAKEDEV is used to create special files for commonly known
devices; it executes mknod with the appropriate arguments and can make
all the files required for the device.
The options are as follows:
-m mode
Set the file permission bits of newly created device special
files to mode. The mode argument can be in any of the formats
specified to the chmod(1) utility. If a symbolic mode is
specified, the operators `+' and `-' are interpreted relative to
an initial mode of ``a=rw''.
To make nodes manually, the arguments are:
name Device or FIFO name. For example ``sd'' for a SCSI disk or a
``pty'' for pseudo-devices. FIFOs may be named arbitrarily by
the user.
b | c | p
Type of device or FIFO. If the device is a block type device
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. A FIFO (also known as a named pipe) is type p.
major The major device number is an integer number which tells the
kernel which device driver entry point to use. To learn what
major device number to use for a particular device, check the
file /dev/MAKEDEV to see if the device is known.
minor The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit the node
corresponds to on the device; for example, a subunit may be a
filesystem partition or a tty line.
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 octal.
SEE ALSOchmod(1), ksh(1), mkfifo(1), mkfifo(2), mknod(2), MAKEDEV(8)STANDARDSmknod also exists as a built-in to ksh(1).
HISTORY
A mknod command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
OpenBSD 4.9 March 27, 2010 OpenBSD 4.9
