.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993
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.\"     @(#)mknod.8	8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
.\" $FreeBSD: src/sbin/mknod/mknod.8,v 1.11.2.10 2003/03/04 15:16:19 keramida Exp $
.\" $DragonFly: src/sbin/mknod/mknod.8,v 1.4 2004/07/06 10:45:24 eirikn Exp $
.\"
.Dd December 11, 1993
.Dt MKNOD 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm mknod
.Nd build special file
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Ar name
.Op Cm c | Cm b
.Ar major minor
.Op Ar owner : Ns Ar group
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility creates device special files.
Normally the shell script
.Pa /dev/MAKEDEV
is used to create special files for commonly known devices; it executes
.Nm
with the appropriate arguments and can make all the files required for the
device.
.Pp
To make nodes manually, the four required arguments are:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Ar name
Device name, for example
.Dq sd
for a SCSI disk on an HP300 or a
.Dq pty
for pseudo-terminals.
.It Cm b | Cm 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
.Cm b .
All other devices are character type devices, such as terminal
and pseudo devices, and are type
.Cm c .
.It Ar 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
.Pa /dev/MAKEDEV
or
.Pa /usr/src/sys/conf/majors .
.It Ar minor
The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit
the node corresponds to on the device; for example,
a subunit may be a file system partition
or a tty line.
.It Ar owner : Ns Ar group
The
.Ar owner
.Ar group
operand pair is optional, however, if one is specified, they both must be
specified.
The
.Ar 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
.Ar 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.
.El
.Pp
Major and minor device numbers can be given in any format acceptable to
.Xr strtoul 3 ,
so that a leading
.Ql 0x
indicates a hexadecimal number, and a leading
.Ql 0
will cause the number to be interpreted as octal.
.Sh COMPATIBILITY
The
.Xr chown 8 Ns - Ns
like functionality is specific to
.Dx
/
.Fx
and was added so that
.Pa /dev/MAKEDEV
would not depend on
.Pa /usr
being mounted.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr mkfifo 1 ,
.Xr mknod 2 ,
.Xr chown 8 ,
.Xr MAKEDEV 8
.Sh HISTORY
A
.Nm
utility appeared in
.At v6 .