1WIPEFS(8)                    MAINTENANCE COMMANDS                    WIPEFS(8)
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NAME

6       wipefs - wipe a filesystem signature from a device
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SYNOPSIS

9       wipefs [-ahnp] [-o offset] device
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DESCRIPTION

12       wipefs  allows  to  erase filesystem or raid signatures (magic strings)
13       from the device to make the filesystem invisible for libblkid.   wipefs
14       does  not erase the whole filesystem or any other data from the device.
15       When used without options -a or -o, it lists  all  visible  filesystems
16       and offsets of their signatures.
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OPTIONS

19       -a, --all
20              Erase all available signatures.
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22       -h, --help
23              Print help and exit.
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25       -n, --no-act
26              Causes everything to be done except for the write() call.
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28       -o, --offset offset
29              Specifies  location  (in bytes) of the signature which should be
30              erased from the device. The offset number  may  include  a  "0x"
31              prefix,  and  then the number will be read as a hex value. It is
32              possible to specify multiple -o options.
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34              The offset argument may be followed  by  binary  (2^N)  suffixes
35              KiB,  MiB, GiB, TiB, PiB and EiB (the "iB" is optional, e.g. "K"
36              has the same meaning as "KiB") or decimal  (10^N)  suffixes  KB,
37              MB, GB, PB and EB.
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39       -p, --parsable
40              Print  out  in  parsable instead of printable format. Encode all
41              potentially unsafe characters of a string to  the  corresponding
42              hex value prefixed by '\x'.
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AUTHOR

45       Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>.
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AVAILABILITY

48       The  wipefs  command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is avail‐
49       able from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.
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SEE ALSO

52       blkid(8) findfs(8)
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57Linux                            October 2009                        WIPEFS(8)