Manual browser: makedev(8)

MAKEDEV(8)

System Manager's Manual

MAKEDEV(8)

NAME

MAKEDEV — create system and device special files

SYNOPSIS

MAKEDEV

[-fMsu] [-m mknod] [-p pax] [-t mtree] {special | device} [...]

DESCRIPTION

MAKEDEV is used to create system and device special files. As arguments it takes the names of known devices, like sd0, or of special targets, like all or std, which create a collection of device special files, or local, which invokes MAKEDEV.local(8) with the all argument.

The script is in /dev/MAKEDEV. Devices are created in the current working directory; in normal use, MAKEDEV should be invoked with /dev as the current working directory.

Supported options are:

MAKEDEV has several possible methods of creating device nodes:

By invoking the mknod(8) command once for each device node. This is the traditional method, but it is slow because each device node is created using a new process.
The -m option forces MAKEDEV to use the mknod(8) method.
By internally creating a specfile in a format usable by mtree(8), and providing the specfile on standard input to a pax(1) or mtree(8) command, invoked with options that request it to create the device nodes as well as any necessary subdirectories. This is much faster than creating device nodes with mknod(8), because it requires much fewer processes; however, it's not compatible with the -f option.
The -p or -t options force MAKEDEV to use the pax(1) or mtree(8) methods.
If the -s option is specified, then MAKEDEV will not create device nodes at all, but will output a specfile in a format usable by mtree(8).

The -m, -p, -s, and -t flags are mutually exclusive. If none of these flags is specified, then MAKEDEV will use mtree(8), pax(1), or mknod(8), in that order of preference, depending on which commands appear to be available and usable. In normal use, it's expected that mtree(8) will be available, so it will be chosen. If MAKEDEV is invoked by init(8), it's expected that mtree(8) will not be available, but pax(1) may be available.

The special targets supported on NetBSD are:

Please note that any hash marks (“#”) in the following list of supported device targets must be replaced by digits when calling MAKEDEV:

Tapes:

Disks:

Pointing devices:

Keyboard devices:

Terminals/Console ports:

Terminal multiplexors:

Call units:

Pseudo terminals:

Printers:

USB devices:

ISDN devices:

Video devices:

Maple bus devices:

IEEE1394 bus devices:

Special purpose devices:

ad#: UNIBUS interface to Data Translation A/D converter, see vax/ad(4)
agp#: AGP GART devices, see agp(4)
altq: ALTQ control interface, see altq(4)
amr#: AMI MegaRaid control device, see amr(4)
apm: Power management device, see i386/apm(4)
audio#: Audio devices, see audio(4)
bell#: OPM bell device (x68k)
bktr: Brooktree 848/849/878/879 based TV cards, see bktr(4)
bpf: Packet filter, see bpf(4)
bthub: Bluetooth Device Hub control interface, see bthub(4)
cfs#: Coda file system device
ch#: SCSI media changer, see ch(4)
cir#: Consumer IR, see cir(4)
clockctl: Clock control for non root users, see clockctl(4)
cpuctl: CPU control
crypto: Hardware crypto access driver, see crypto(4)
dmoverio: Hardware-assisted data movers, see dmoverio(4)
dpt#: DPT/Adaptec EATA RAID management interface, see dpt(4)
dpti#: DPT/Adaptec I2O RAID management interface, see dpti(4)
drm#: Direct Rendering Manager interface, see drm(4)
dtv#: Digital TV interface, see dtv(4)
fb#: PMAX generic framebuffer pseudo-device
fd: File descriptors
grf#: Graphics frame buffer device, see amiga/grf(4)
hdaudio#: High Definition audio control device, see hdaudio(4)
hil: HP300 HIL input devices, see hil(4)
icp: ICP-Vortex/Intel RAID control interface, see icp(4)
iic#: IIC bus device, see iic(4)
io: X86 IOPL access for COMPAT_10, COMPAT_FREEBSD, see hppa/io(4), i386/io(4)
iop#: I2O IOP control interface, see iop(4)
ipl: IP Filter
irframe#: IrDA physical frame, see irframe(4)
ite#: Terminal emulator interface to HP300 graphics devices, see amiga/ite(4)
joy#: Joystick device, see joy(4)
kttcp: Kernel ttcp helper device, see kttcp(4)
lockstat: Kernel locking statistics
magma#: Magma multiport serial/parallel cards, see sparc/magma(4)
midi#: MIDI, see midi(4)
mlx#: Mylex DAC960 control interface, see mlx(4)
mly#: Mylex AcceleRAID/eXtremeRAID control interface, see mly(4)
np#: UNIBUS Ethernet co-processor interface, for downloading., see vax/np(4)
npf: NPF packet filter
nsmb#: SMB requester, see nsmb(4)
openfirm: OpenFirmware accessor
pad#: Pseudo-audio device driver, see pad(4)
pci#: PCI bus access devices, see pci(4)
pf: PF packet filter
putter: Pass-to-Userspace Transporter
px#: PixelStamp Xserver access, see px(4)
radio#: Radio devices, see radio(4)
random: Random number generator, see rnd(4)
rtc#: RealTimeClock, see atari/rtc(4), evbppc/rtc(4), hp300/rtc(4)
satlink#: PlanetConnect satellite receiver driver
scsibus#: SCSI busses, see scsi(4)
se#: SCSI Ethernet, see se(4)
ses#: SES/SAF-TE SCSI Devices, see ses(4)
speaker: PC speaker, see speaker(4)
sram: Battery backuped memory (x68k)
ss#: SCSI scanner, see ss(4)
stic#: PixelStamp interface chip
sysmon: System Monitoring hardware, see envsys(4)
tap#: Virtual Ethernet device, see tap(4)
tun#: Network tunnel driver, see tun(4)
twa: 3ware Apache control interface, see twa(4)
twe: 3ware Escalade control interface, see twe(4)
uk#: Unknown SCSI device, see uk(4)
veriexec: Veriexec fingerprint loader, see veriexec(4)
video#: Video capture devices, see video(4)
view#: Generic interface to graphic displays (Amiga)
wsfont#: Console font control, see wsfont(4)
wsmux#: wscons event multiplexor, see wsmux(4)
xenevt: Xen event interface

iSCSI communication devices

ENVIRONMENT

The following environment variables affect the execution of MAKEDEV:

FILES

DIAGNOSTICS

If the script reports an error that is difficult to understand, you can get more debugging output by using

sh -x MAKEDEV argument.

HISTORY

The MAKEDEV command appeared in 4.2BSD. The -f, -m, and -s options were added in NetBSD 2.0. The -p, -t, and -M options were added in NetBSD 5.0. The ability to be used as a function library was added in NetBSD 5.0.

BUGS

The -f option is not compatible with the use of mtree(8) or pax(1).

NOTES

Not all devices listed in this manpage are supported on all platforms.

This man page is generated automatically from the same sources as /dev/MAKEDEV, in which the device files are not always sorted, which may result in an unusual (non-alphabetical) order.

In order to allow a diskless NetBSD client to obtain its /dev directory from a file server running a foreign operating system, one of the following techniques may be useful to populate a directory of device nodes on the foreign server:

If the foreign server is sufficiently similar to NetBSD, run MAKEDEV in an appropriate directory of the foreign server, using the -m flag to refer to a script that converts from command line arguments that would be usable with the NetBSD mknod(8) command to the equivalent commands for the foreign server.
Run MAKEDEV with the -s flag to generate an mtree(8) specification file; this can be done on any host with a POSIX-compliant shell and a few widely-available utilities. Use the pax(1) command with the -w -M flags to convert the mtree(8) specification file into an archive in a format that supports device nodes (such as ustar format); this can be done on a NetBSD host, or can be done in a cross-build environment using TOOLDIR/bin/nbpax. Finally, use apropriate tools on the foreign server to unpack the archive and create the device nodes.

February 25, 2012

NetBSD 7.0

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