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mknod(8) [freebsd man page]

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

Check Out this Related Man Page

HD(4)							     Linux Programmer's Manual							     HD(4)

NAME

       hd - MFM/IDE hard disk devices

DESCRIPTION

       The  hd*  devices  are block devices to access MFM/IDE hard disk drives in raw mode.  The master drive on the primary IDE controller (major
       device number 3) is hda; the slave drive is hdb.  The master drive of the second controller (major device number 22) is hdc and	the  slave
       hdd.

       General	IDE block device names have the form hdX, or hdXP, where X is a letter denoting the physical drive, and P is a number denoting the
       partition on that physical drive.  The first form, hdX, is used to address the whole drive.  Partition numbers are assigned  in	the  order
       the  partitions	are  discovered,  and only nonempty, nonextended partitions get a number.  However, partition numbers 1-4 are given to the
       four partitions described in the MBR (the "primary" partitions), regardless of whether they are unused or extended.  Thus, the first  logi-
       cal  partition  will be hdX5.  Both DOS-type partitioning and BSD-disklabel partitioning are supported.	You can have at most 63 partitions
       on an IDE disk.

       For example, /dev/hda refers to all of the first IDE drive in the system; and /dev/hdb3 refers to the third DOS "primary" partition on  the
       second one.

       They are typically created by:

	      mknod -m 660 /dev/hda b 3 0
	      mknod -m 660 /dev/hda1 b 3 1
	      mknod -m 660 /dev/hda2 b 3 2
	      ...
	      mknod -m 660 /dev/hda8 b 3 8
	      mknod -m 660 /dev/hdb b 3 64
	      mknod -m 660 /dev/hdb1 b 3 65
	      mknod -m 660 /dev/hdb2 b 3 66
	      ...
	      mknod -m 660 /dev/hdb8 b 3 72
	      chown root:disk /dev/hd*

FILES

       /dev/hd*

SEE ALSO

       chown(1), mknod(1), sd(4), mount(8)

COLOPHON

       This  page is part of release 3.53 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux								    1992-12-17								     HD(4)
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