.\"	$OpenBSD: mknod.8,v 1.8 1999/07/21 12:32:18 aaron Exp $
.\"	$NetBSD: mknod.8,v 1.9 1995/08/10 23:47:32 jtc Exp $
.\"
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.\"     @(#)mknod.8	8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
.\"
.Dd April 18, 1999
.Dt MKNOD 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm mknod
.Nd build special file
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm mknod
.Op Fl m Ar mode
.Ar name
.Op Cm c | Cm b
.Ar major minor
.Nm mknod
.Op Fl m Ar mode
.Ar name
.Cm p
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
command creates device special files.
Normally the shell script
.Pa /dev/MAKEDEV
is used to create special files for commonly known devices; it executes
.Nm
with the appropriate arguments and can make all the files required for the
device.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl m Ar mode
Set the file mode.
.Ar mode
may be absolute or symbolic, as described in
.Xr chmod 1 .
In symbolic mode strings, the
.Ql +
and
.Ql -
operators are interpreted relative to an assumed initial mode of
.Dq a=rw .
.El
.Pp
To make nodes manually, the arguments are:
.Bl -tag -width majorx
.It Ar name
Device or FIFO name.  For example
.Dq sd
for a SCSI disk or a
.Dq pty
for pseudo-devices.  FIFOs may be named arbitrarily by the user.
.It Cm b | Cm c | Cm p
Type of device or FIFO. 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
.Cm b .
All other devices are character type devices, such as terminal
and pseudo devices, and are type
.Cm c .
A FIFO (also known as a named pipe) is type
.Cm p .
.It Ar 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
.Pa /dev/MAKEDEV
to see if the device is known.
.It Ar minor
The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit
the node corresponds to on the device; for example,
a subunit may be a filesystem partition
or a tty line.
.Pp
Major and minor device numbers can be given in any format acceptable to
.Xr strtoul 3 ,
so that a leading
.Dq 0x
indicates a hexadecimal number, and a leading
.Dq 0
will cause the number to be interpreted as octal.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr chmod 1 ,
.Xr mkfifo 1 ,
.Xr mkfifo 2 ,
.Xr mknod 2 ,
.Xr MAKEDEV 8
.Sh HISTORY
A
.Nm
command appeared in
.At v6 .