Creating devices (Makedev-1.7)

Contents of MAKEDEV

Last checked against version 1.5.

The MAKEDEV script creates the static device nodes which usually reside in the /dev directory. Detailed information about device nodes may be found in the Documentation/devices.txt file under the Linux kernel source tree.

MAKEDEV installs the following:

MAKEDEV Installation Dependencies

Last checked against version 1.5.

Bash: sh
Fileutils: chmod, chown, cp, ln, mknod, mv, rm
Grep: grep
Sh-utils: expr, id

Creating devices

Please note that unpacking the MAKEDEV-1.7.bz2 file doesn't create a directory for you to cd into, as the file contains one shell script.

Install the MAKEDEV script:

cp MAKEDEV-1.7 /dev/MAKEDEV

Prepare the script for execution:

cd /dev && chmod 754 MAKEDEV

Run the script to create the device files:

./MAKEDEV -v generic

If a device you need is missing, try running ./MAKEDEV -v <device>. Alternatively, you may create devices via the mknod program. Please refer to the man and info pages of mknod if you need more information.

If you intend to use devpts, pass the generic-nopty option to MAKEDEV. This creates the same devices as generic, but it skips the creation of pty devices so that devpts can manage those.