1 .\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993
2 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
4 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
5 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
7 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
8 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
9 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
10 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
11 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
12 .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
13 .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
14 .\" without specific prior written permission.
16 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
17 .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
18 .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
19 .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
20 .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
21 .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
22 .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
23 .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
24 .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
25 .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
33 .Nd build special file
41 .Op Ar owner : Ns Ar group
46 utility is deprecated on modern
53 utility creates device special files.
54 To make nodes manually, the arguments are:
55 .Bl -tag -width indent
57 Device name, for example
65 device is a block type device such as a tape or disk drive which needs
66 both cooked and raw special files,
69 All other devices are character type devices, such as terminal
70 and pseudo devices, and are type
73 The major device number is an integer number which tells the kernel
74 which device driver entry point to use.
76 The minor device number tells the kernel which subunit
77 the node corresponds to on the device; for example,
78 a subunit may be a file system partition
80 .It Ar owner : Ns Ar group
84 operand pair is optional, however, if one is specified, they both must be
88 may be either a numeric user ID or a user name.
89 If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a
93 may be either a numeric group ID or a group name.
94 Similar to the user name,
95 if a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a
99 Major and minor device numbers can be given in any format acceptable to
103 indicates a hexadecimal number, and a leading
105 will cause the number to be interpreted as octal.
109 utility can be used to recreate deleted device nodes under a
111 mount point by invoking it with only a filename as an argument.
118 is the name of the deleted device node.
122 like functionality is specific to
127 block devices were deprecated in favour of character
131 device nodes are managed by the device file system
138 device nodes may be created in regular file systems but such
139 nodes cannot be used to access devices.