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 in a number of directories, like
perhaps
/sbin,
/sbin/fs,
/sbin/fs.d,
/etc/fs,
/etc (the precise list is defined at compile time but at least contains
/sbin and
/sbin/fs), and finally in the directories listed in
the PATH environment variable. 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/.