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MKFS
Section: System Administration (8)Updated: 202-1-15
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NAME
mkfs - build a Linux filesystemSYNOPSIS
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 status 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.
-h, --help
- Display help text and exit.
-V, --version
- Display version and exit. (Option -V will display version information only when it is the only parameter, otherwise it will work as --verbose.)
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
The manual page was shamelessly adapted from Remy Cardcqs 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)
REPORTING BUGS
For bug reports, use the https://github.com/uti-linux/uti-linux/issues <L>issue tracker
AVAILABILITY
The mkfs command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/uti-linux/ <L>Linux Kernel Archive