Hi Guys,
On my AIX server , I have this file "mknod" present in the /etc/ directory. When i try opening it , I dont find
any ascii characters. It shows some encryption/binary format which is not readable. Is it any executable ? what is the
purpose of having this file in etc folder? what if this file is not present ? Request your inputs for the same. Thanks in
advance. 
Well, you could have answered to your question by doing a little:
ls -l /etc/mknod
It's a link to /usr/sbin/mknod which is a binary executable file. You should not remove the /etc/mknod file as it might be used by other programs or scripts, etc. /etc/mknod gets created by default.
mknod is for example used to create special (asm, voting, ocr) devices for oracle asm. Syntax would be mknod /dev/asm_disk01 c 14 1 where 14 would be the major and 1 the minor number of the disk, the device you created is residing.
Regards
zxmaus