MKNOD

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
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BSD mandoc
BSD 4

NAME

mknod - build special file

SYNOPSIS

mknod name [c | b ] major minor

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.

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-devices.
b | c: Type of device. 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 psuedo devices, and are type c
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, or check the system dependent device configuration file:
``/usr/src/sys/conf/device. architecture ''

(for example device.hp300 )
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.

HISTORY

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