.\"	$OpenBSD: mknod.8,v 1.3 1996/08/02 11:16:47 deraadt 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 December 11, 1993
.Dt MKNOD 8
.Os BSD 4
.Sh NAME
.Nm mknod
.Nd build special file
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm mknod
.Ar name
.Op Cm c | Cm b
.Ar major minor
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm mknod
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 mknod
with the appropriate arguments and can make all the files required for the
device.
.Pp
To make nodes manually, the four required arguments are:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width majorx
.It Ar name
Device name, for example
.Dq sd
for a SCSI disk on an HP300 or a
.Dq pty
for pseudo-devices.
.It Cm b | Cm 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
.Cm b .
All other devices are character type devices, such as terminal
and pseudo devices, and are type
.Cm c .
.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, or check
the system dependent device configuration file:
.Bd -filled -offset indent
.Dq Pa /usr/src/sys/conf/device. Ns Em architecture
.Ed
.Pp
(for example
.Pa device.hp300 ) .
.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
.Ql 0x
indicates a hexadecimal number, and a leading
.Ql 0
will cause the number to be interpreted as octal.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr mknod 2 ,
.Xr MAKEDEV 8
.Sh HISTORY
A
.Nm
command appeared in
.At v6 .