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

# NAME

`mknod` — make device special files

# SYNOPSIS

`mknod` | [`-m` mode] name `b`|`c` major minor

`mknod` | [`-m` mode] name `p`

# DESCRIPTION

The `mknod` command 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.

The options are as follows:

`-m` mode
  Set the file permission bits of newly created device special files to mode. The mode argument can be in any of the formats specified to the chmod(1) utility. If a symbolic mode is specified, the operators ‘`+`’ and ‘`-`’ are interpreted relative to an initial mode of “a=rw”.

To make nodes manually, the arguments are:

name
  Device or FIFO name. For example “sd” for a SCSI disk or a “pty” for pseudo-devices. FIFOs may be named arbitrarily by the user.
`b` | `c` | `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 `b`. All other devices are character type devices, such as terminal and pseudo devices, and are type `c`. A FIFO (also known as a named pipe) is type `p`.
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 /dev/MAKEDEV to see if the device is known.
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.

  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.

# SEE ALSO

chmod(1), mkfifo(1), mkfifo(2), mknod(2), MAKEDEV(8)

# STANDARDS

As an extension, `mknod` can also take multiple lists of parameters in one go. Note that `-m` is not reset from one list to the next so, for example, in

`mknod -m 700 name b 12 5 name2 b 12 6`

both name and name2 will be mode 700.

# HISTORY

A `mknod` command appeared in Version 4 AT&T UNIX.

October 6, 2016 | Debian