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Full Discussion: Mknod
Operating Systems HP-UX Mknod Post 302199320 by bdittmar on Monday 26th of May 2008 11:29:57 AM
Old 05-26-2008
Mknod

Quote:
Originally Posted by sbn
Hey guys i dont quite understand mknod, can anyone explain it to me and what is its purpose in LVM.

Hello,

mknod - create special files
SYNOPSIS

/sbin/mknod name c major minor

/sbin/mknod name b major minor

/sbin/mknod name p
DESCRIPTION

The mknod command creates the following types of files:

*

Character device special file (first SYNOPSIS form),
*

Block device special file (second SYNOPSIS form),
*

FIFO file, sometimes called a named pipe (third SYNOPSIS form).

name is the path name of the file to be created. The newly created file has a default mode that is readable and writable by all users (0666), but the mode is modified by the current setting of the user's file mode creation mask (see umask(1)).
Character and Block Special Files

Character device special files are used for devices that can transfer single bytes at a time, such as nine-track magnetic tape drives, printers, plotters, disk drives operating in "raw" mode, and terminals. To create a character special file, use the c argument.

Block device special files are used for devices that usually transfer a block of data at a time, such as disk drives. To create a block device special file, use the b argument.

The remaining arguments specify the device that will be accessible through the new special file:

major

The major number specifies the major device type (for example, the device driver number).
minor

The minor number specifies the device location, which is typically, but not always, the unit, drive, and/or line number.

The major and minor values can each be specified in hexadecimal, octal, or decimal, using C language conventions (decimal: no leading zero; octal: leading zero; hexadecimal: leading 0x).

The assignment of major and minor device numbers is specific to each HP-UX system. Refer to the System Administrator manuals supplied with your system for details.

Only users who have appropriate privileges can use mknod to create a character or block device special file.
FIFO files

To create a FIFO (named pipe or buffer) file, use the p argument. You can also use the mkfifo command for this purpose (see mkfifo(1)). All users can use mknod to create FIFO files.
WARNINGS

Access Control Lists

In HFS file systems, optional ACL entries can be added to special files and FIFOs with the chacl command (see chacl(1)). In JFS file systems, optional ACL entries can be added to special files and FIFOs with the setacl command (see setacl(1)). However, system programs are likely to silently change or eliminate the optional ACL entries for these files.

Regards
 

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MKNOD(8)						    BSD System Manager's Manual 						  MKNOD(8)

NAME
mknod -- build special file SYNOPSIS
mknod name 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 arguments are: name Device name, for example /dev/da0 for a SCSI disk or /dev/pts/0 for pseudo-terminals. 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 pseudo 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. 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. 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 octal. The mknod utility can be used to recreate deleted device nodes under a devfs(5) mount point by invoking it with only a filename as an argu- ment. Example: mknod /dev/cd0 where /dev/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
January 31, 2010 BSD
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