lfs-book/chapter06/makedev-inst.xml

<sect2>
<title>Creating devices</title>

<para>
Note: the MAKEDEV.bz2 file you have unpacked is not an archive, so it 
won't create a directory for you to cd into.
</para>

<para>
Create the device files by running the following commands:
</para>

<blockquote><literallayout>
	<userinput>chmod 755 MAKEDEV &amp;&amp;</userinput>
	<userinput>cp MAKEDEV /dev &amp;&amp;</userinput>
	<userinput>cd /dev &amp;&amp;</userinput>
	<userinput>./MAKEDEV -v generic</userinput>
</literallayout></blockquote>

<para>
The <quote>generic</quote> parameter passed to the MAKEDEV script
doesn't create all the devices a user might need, such as audio devices,
hdc, hdd and others. If it seems something is missing MAKEDEV has to be told
to create it. To create hdc replace generic with hdc. A user can also add hdc
to generic, so he would execute <userinput>./MAKEDEV -v generic
hdc</userinput> to create the generic set of devices files, plus the
files he needs to be able to access hdc (and hdc1, hdc2, etc)
</para>

<para>
MAKEDEV will create hda[1-20] and hdb[1-20] and such but he has to keep in mind
that he may not be able to use all of those devices due to kernel 
limitations regarding the max. number of partitions.
</para>

</sect2>