mkfs(8)

NAME

   mkfs - build a Linux filesystem

SYNOPSIS

   mkfs [options] [-t type] [fs-options] device [size]

DESCRIPTION

   This  mkfs  frontend  is  deprecated  in  favour of filesystem specific
   mkfs.<type> utils.

   mkfs is used to build a Linux filesystem on a device,  usually  a  hard
   disk  partition.   The  device argument is either the device name (e.g.
   /dev/hda1, /dev/sdb2),  or  a  regular  file  that  shall  contain  the
   filesystem.   The  size argument is the number of blocks to be used for
   the filesystem.

   The exit code returned by mkfs is 0 on success and 1 on failure.

   In actuality, mkfs is simply a front-end  for  the  various  filesystem
   builders  (mkfs.fstype) available under Linux.  The filesystem-specific
   builder is searched for via your PATH environment setting only.  Please
   see the filesystem-specific builder manual pages for further details.

OPTIONS

   -t, --type type
          Specify  the  type of filesystem to be built.  If not specified,
          the default filesystem type (currently ext2) is used.

   fs-options
          Filesystem-specific options to be passed to the real  filesystem
          builder.

   -V, --verbose
          Produce   verbose   output,  including  all  filesystem-specific
          commands that are executed.  Specifying this  option  more  than
          once  inhibits  execution  of  any filesystem-specific commands.
          This is really only useful for testing.

   -V, --version
          Display version information and exit.  (Option -V  will  display
          version   information  only  when  it  is  the  only  parameter,
          otherwise it will work as --verbose.)

   -h, --help
          Display help text and exit.

BUGS

   All generic options must precede and not be combined  with  filesystem-
   specific   options.    Some   filesystem-specific   programs   do   not
   automatically detect the device size and require the size parameter  to
   be specified.

AUTHORS

   David Engel (david@ods.com)
   Fred N. van Kempen (waltje@uwalt.nl.mugnet.org)
   Ron Sommeling (sommel@sci.kun.nl)
   The  manual  page  was shamelessly adapted from Remy Card's version for
   the ext2 filesystem.

SEE ALSO

   fs(5), badblocks(8), fsck(8), mkdosfs(8), mke2fs(8), mkfs.bfs(8),
   mkfs.ext2(8), mkfs.ext3(8), mkfs.ext4(8), mkfs.minix(8), mkfs.msdos(8),
   mkfs.vfat(8), mkfs.xfs(8)

AVAILABILITY

   The mkfs command is part of the util-linux  package  and  is  available
   from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.

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