Device nodes provided by udev
If your distribution provides udev, you can use udev to create device nodes for you.
Most udev setups create device nodes according to the device names that are used by the applicable device driver. A disadvantage of these standard device nodes is that they do not guarantee a persistent mapping of device node to physical device. For example, the mapping can change when Linux® is rebooted or when devices are removed or added through hotplug events.
Apart from standard device nodes, udev can create device nodes that are derived from unique characteristics of the physical devices, for example, from device bus-IDs or UUIDs. Unless you change these device characteristics, the mapping of physical devices to derived device nodes persists even if the device driver uses a different device name.
The format of the nodes that udev creates for you depends on distribution-specific configuration files in /etc/udev/rules.d/. If you use udev, be sure that you use the nodes according to your distribution. See your distribution documentation to find out which udev-created device nodes are available.
See the udev man page for more details.