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

NAME
     mknod - build special file

SYNOPSIS
     mknod name [c | b] major minor [owner:group]

DESCRIPTION
     The mknod utility 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 four required arguments are:

     name    Device name, for example ``sd'' for a SCSI disk on an HP300 or a
	     ``pty'' 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 ker-
	     nel which device driver entry point to use.  To learn what major
	     device number to use for a particular device, check /dev/MAKEDEV
	     or /usr/src/sys/conf/majors.

     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.

COMPATIBILITY
     The chown(8)-like functionality is specific to FreeBSD and was added so
     that /dev/MAKEDEV would not depend on /usr being mounted.

SEE ALSO
     mkfifo(1), mknod(2), chown(8), MAKEDEV(8)

HISTORY
     A mknod utility appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.

FreeBSD 4.8		       December 11, 1993		   FreeBSD 4.8