.\" -*- nroff -*-
.\" Copyright 2009 by Karel Zak.  All Rights Reserved.
.\" This file may be copied under the terms of the GNU Public License.
.\"
.TH WIPEFS 8 "October 2009" "util-linux" "System Administration"
.SH NAME
wipefs \- wipe a filesystem signature from a device
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B wipefs
.RB [ \-ahnpV ]
.RB [ \-o
.IR offset ]
.I device
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B wipefs
can erase filesystem or raid signatures (magic strings) from the specified
.I device
to make the filesystem invisible for libblkid.
.B wipefs
does not erase the filesystem itself nor any other data from the device.
When used without options \fB-a\fR or \fB-o\fR, it lists all visible filesystems
and the offsets of their signatures.
.SH OPTIONS
.IP "\fB\-a, \-\-all\fP"
Erase all available signatures.
.IP "\fB\-h, \-\-help\fP"
Print help and exit.
.IP "\fB\-n, \-\-no\-act\fP"
Causes everything to be done except for the write() call.
.IP "\fB\-o, \-\-offset\fP \fIoffset\fP
Specify the location (in bytes) of the signature which should be erased from the
device.  The \fIoffset\fR number may include a "0x" prefix; then the number will be
interpreted as a hex value.  It is possible to specify multiple \fB-o\fR options.

The \fIoffset\fR argument may be followed by binary (2^N) suffixes KiB, MiB,
GiB, TiB, PiB and EiB (the "iB" is optional, e.g. "K" has the same meaning as
"KiB") or decimal (10^N) suffixes KB, MB, GB, PB and EB.
.IP "\fB\-p, \-\-parsable\fP"
Print out in parsable instead of printable format.  Encode all potentially unsafe
characters of a string to the corresponding hex value prefixed by '\\x'.
.IP "\fB\-V, \-\-version\fP"
Output version information and exit.
.SH AUTHOR
Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>.
.SH AVAILABILITY
The wipefs command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR blkid (8)
.BR findfs (8)