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Copyright 1989 AT&T Copyright (c) 1996, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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MKNOD 8 "Sep 16, 1996"
NAME
mknod - make a special file
SYNOPSIS

mknod name b major minor

mknod name c major minor

mknod name p
DESCRIPTION

mknod makes a directory entry for a special file.

OPTIONS

The following options are supported: b

Create a block-type special file.

c

Create a character-type special file.

p

Create a FIFO (named pipe).

OPERANDS

The following operands are supported: major

The major device number.

minor

The minor device number; can be either decimal or octal. The assignment of major device numbers is specific to each system. You must be the super-user to use this form of the command.

name

A special file to be created.

USAGE

See largefile(7) for the description of the behavior of mknod when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2^31 bytes).

SEE ALSO

ftp (1), mknod (2), symlink (2), attributes (7), largefile (7)

NOTES

If mknod(2) is used to create a device, the major and minor device numbers are always interpreted by the kernel running on that machine.

With the advent of physical device naming, it would be preferable to create a symbolic link to the physical name of the device (in the /devices subtree) rather than using mknod.