MAKEDEV - create devices
SYNOPSIS
cd dev; ./MAKEDEV -V
cd dev; ./MAKEDEV [ -d directory ] [ -c configdir ] [ -m
maxdevices ] [-n] [-v] [-i] [-M] [-S] device ...
DESCRIPTION
MAKEDEV is a program that will create the devices in /dev
used to interface with drivers in the kernel.
Note that programs giving the error ``ENOENT: No such file
or directory'' normally means that the device file is
missing, whereas ``ENODEV: No such device'' normally means
the kernel does not have the driver configured or loaded.
OPTIONS
-V Print out version and exit.
-n Do not actually update the devices, just print the
actions that would be performed.
-M Create symlinks, directories, and sockets belonging
to the current user, and print out the list of
devices which would be created in a format which is
understood by RPM.
-S Do not actually update the devices, just print the
actions that would be performed in a format which
can be fed to a shell.
-d directory
Create the devices under directory instead of the
default (usually /dev).
-v Be verbose. Print out the actions as they are per
formed. This is the same output as produced by the
-n option.
-i Ignore errors parsing configuration files.
CUSTOMIZATION
Since there is currently no standardization in what names
are used for system users and groups, it is possible that
you may need to modify MAKEDEV's configuration files to
reflect your site's settings.
DEVICES
Certain devices are required for minimal functionality.
These are:
mem - access to physical memory; kmem - access to
kernel virtual memory; null - null device (infinite
sink); port - access to I/O ports; zero - null byte
/proc/kcore (for kernel debugging); full - always
returns ENOSPACE on write; ram - ramdisk; tty - to
access the controlling tty of a process.
Virtual Terminals
console
This creates the devices associated with the con
sole. These are the virtual terminals ttyx, where
x can be from 0 though 63. The device tty0 is the
currently active VT, and is also known as console.
For each VT, there are two devices: vcsx and vcsax,
which can be used to generate screen-dumps of the
VT (vcsx is just the text, and vcsax includes the
attributes).
Serial Devices
ttyS{0..63}
Serial ports.
Pseudo Terminals
pty[p-s]
Each possible argument will create a bank of 16
master and slave pairs. The current kernel (1.2)
is limited to 64 such pairs. The master pseudo-
terminals are pty[p-s][0-9a-f], and the slaves are
tty[p-s][0-9a-f].
Parallel Ports
lp Standard parallel ports. The devices are created
lp0, lp1, and lp2.
Bus Mice
busmice
The various bus mice devices. This creates the
following devices: logimouse (Logitech bus mouse),
psmouse (PS/2-style mouse), msmouse (Microsoft
Inport bus mouse) and atimouse (ATI XL bus mouse)
and jmouse (J-mouse).
Joystick Devices
js Joystick. Creates js0 and js1.
Disk Devices
fd[0-7]
Floppy disk devices. The device fdx is the device
which autodetects the format, and the additional
in the name). The other devices are named as
fdxLn. The single letter L identifies the type of
floppy disk (d = 5.25" DD, h = 5.25" HD, D = 3.5"
DD, H = 3.5" HD, E = 3.5" ED). The number n repre
sents the capacity of that format in K. Thus the
standard formats are fdxd360, fdxh1200, fdxD720,
fdxH1440, and fdxE2880.
For more information see Alain Knaff's fdutils
package.
Devices fd0* through fd3* are floppy disks on the
first controller, and devices fd4* through fd7* are
floppy disks on the second controller.
hd[a-d]
AT hard disks. The device hdx provides access to
the whole disk, with the partitions being
hdx[0-20]. The four primary partitions are hdx1
through hdx4, with the logical partitions being
numbered from hdx5 though hdx20. (A primary parti
tion can be made into an extended partition, which
can hold 4 logical partitions). By default, only
the devices for 4 logical partitions are made. The
others can be made by uncommenting them.
Drives hda and hdb are the two on the first con
troller. If using the new IDE driver (rather than
the old HD driver), then hdc and hdd are the two
drives on the secondary controller. These devices
can also be used to acess IDE CDROMs if using the
new IDE driver.
xd[a-d]
XT hard disks. Partitions are the same as IDE
disks.
sd[a-z], sd[a-c][a-z], sdd[a-x]
SCSI hard disks. The partitions are similar to the
IDE disks, but there is a limit of 11 logical par
titions (sdx5 through sdx15). This is to allow
there to be 128 SCSI disks.
loop Loopback disk devices. These allow you to use a
regular file as a block device. This means that
images of filesystems can be mounted, and used as
normal. This creates 16 devices loop0 through
loop15.
Tape Devices
st[0-7]
SCSI tapes. This creates the rewinding tape device
qic QIC-80 tapes. The devices created are rmt8, rmt16,
tape-d, and tape-reset.
ftape Floppy driver tapes (QIC-117). There are 4 methods
of access depending on the floppy tape drive. For
each of access methods 0, 1, 2 and 3, the devices
rftx (rewinding) and nrftx (non-rewinding) are cre
ated. For compatability, devices ftape and nftape
are symlinks to rft0 and nrft0 respectively.
CDROM Devices
scd[0-7]
SCSI CD players.
sonycd Sony CDU-31A CD player.
mcd Mitsumi CD player.
cdu535 Sony CDU-535 CD player.
lmscd LMS/Philips CD player.
sbpcd{,1,2,3}
Sound Blaster CD player. The kernel is capable of
supporting 16 CDROMs, each of which is accessed as
sbpcd[0-9a-f]. These are assigned in groups of 4
to each controller. sbpcd is a symlink to sbpcd0.
Scanner
logiscan
Logitech ScanMan32 & ScanMan 256.
m105scan
Mustek M105 Handscanner.
ac4096 A4Tek Color Handscanner.
Audio
sound This creates the audio devices used by the sound
driver. These include mixer, sequencer, dsp, and
audio.
Miscellaneous
sg Generic SCSI devices. The devices created are sga
through sgh and sg0 through sg7. These allow
arbitary commands to be sent to any SCSI device.
This allows for querying information about the
device, or controlling SCSI devices that are not
RW).
fd To allow an arbitary program to be fed input from
file descriptor x, use /dev/fd/x as the file name.
This also creates /dev/stdin, /dev/stdout, and
/dev/stderr. (Note, these are just symlinks into
/proc/self/fd).
ibcs2 Devices (and symlinks) needed by the IBCS2 emula
tion.
apm Devices for power management.
Network Devices
Linux used to have devices in /dev for controlling
network devices, but that is no longer the case.
To see what network devices are known by the ker
nel, look in /proc/net/dev.
Other Devices
Note that the list of devices above is not exhaus
tive. MAKEDEV can create more devices nodes. Its
aim is to be able to create everything listed in
the devices.txt file distributed with Linux 2.4.
CONFIGURATION
MAKEDEV doesn't actually know anything about devices. It
reads all of the information from files stored in
/etc/makedev.d. MAKEDEV will read any and all files in
the subdirectory, processing lines in them like so:
devices
[b|c] mode owner group major minor inc count fmt
[base]
count devices will be created, with permissions set
to mode and owned by owner and group. The first
device will be named fmt, and additional devices
will be created if count is larger than 1. If fmt
contains a C-style formatting string, it will be
filled with the sum of base and zero. Subsequent
devices will be filled with the sum of base and n *
inc, where n is the order this device is being cre
ated in. If the format string did not already
include a format specifier, a "%d" will automati
cally be appended to it to make this work.
symbolic links
l linkname target
A symbolic link pointing to target named linkname
will be created.
a alias value
Any commands that create devices for alias will
also include devices that would be crated for
value.
SEE ALSO
Linux Allocated Devices, maintained by H. Peter Anvin,
<Peter.Anvin@linux.org>.
BUGS
Let's hope not. If we're lucky, any problems we'll find
will be confined to the configuration files, which were
written by examining the devices.txt file.
AUTHOR
Nalin Dahyabhai, based largely on work done by Nick Hol
loway and Michael K. Johnson.
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