mknod(1M) System Administration Commands mknod(1M)NAME
mknod - make a special file
SYNOPSIS
mknod name b major minor
mknod name c major minor
mknod name p
DESCRIPTION
mknod makes a directory entry for a special file.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
b Create a block-type special file.
c Create a character-type special file.
p Create a FIFO (named pipe).
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
major The major device number.
minor The minor device number; can be either decimal or octal. The assignment of major device numbers is specific to each system. You
must be the super-user to use this form of the command.
name A special file to be created.
USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of mknod when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2^31 bytes).
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|Availability |SUNWcsu |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
SEE ALSO ftp(1), in.ftpd(1M), mknod(2), symlink(2), attributes(5), largefile(5)NOTES
If mknod(2) is used to create a device, the major and minor device numbers are always interpreted by the kernel running on that machine.
With the advent of physical device naming, it would be preferable to create a symbolic link to the physical name of the device (in the
/devices subtree) rather than using mknod.
SunOS 5.11 16 Sep 1996 mknod(1M)
Check Out this Related Man Page
MKNOD(8) BSD System Manager's Manual MKNOD(8)NAME
mknod -- make device special file
SYNOPSIS
mknod [-F format] name [c | b] major minor
[-F format] name [c | b] major unit subunit
name [c | b] number
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.
To make nodes manually, the required arguments are:
name Device name, for example ``sd'' for a SCSI disk on an HP300 or a ``pty'' for pseudo-devices.
b | c | p
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 pseudo devices, and are type c. To create named pipes
the type p can be used.
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 depen-
dent device configuration file:
``/usr/src/sys/conf/device.architecture''
(for example device.hp300).
minor The minor device number tells the kernel which one of several similar devices the node corresponds to; for example, it may be a spe-
cific serial port or pty.
unit and subunit
The unit and subunit numbers select a subset of a device; for example, the unit may specify a particular SCSI disk, and the subunit a
partition on that disk. (Currently this form of specification is only supported by the bsdos format, for compatibility with the
BSD/OS mknod(8) .)
Device numbers for different operating systems may be packed in a different format. To create device nodes that may be used by such an oper-
ating system (e.g. in an exported file system used for netbooting), the -F option is used. The following formats are recognized: native,
386bsd, 4bsd, bsdos, freebsd, hpux, isc, linux, netbsd, osf1, sco, solaris, sunos, svr3, svr4 and ultrix.
Alternatively, a single opaque device number may be specified.
SEE ALSO mkfifo(1), mkfifo(2), mknod(2), MAKEDEV(8)HISTORY
A mknod command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX. The -F option appeared in NetBSD 1.4.
NetBSD 1.4 September 11, 1998 NetBSD 1.4