MKNOD(8) BSD System Manager's Manual MKNOD(8)NAMEmknod — make device special file
SYNOPSISmknod [-F format] name [c | b] major minor
mknod [-F format] name [c | b] major unit subunit
mknod name [c | b] number
mknod name w
DESCRIPTION
The mknod command creates device special files.
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 | w
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. Whiteout nodes are type w. 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 ker‐
nel which device driver entry point to use.
minor The minor device number tells the kernel which one of several
similar devices the node corresponds to; for example, it may be a
specific 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 speci‐
fication 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 differ‐
ent format. To create device nodes that may be used by such an operating
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 ALSOmkfifo(1), mkfifo(2), mknod(2)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
