1MKFS(8)                      System Administration                     MKFS(8)
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NAME

6       mkfs - build a Linux filesystem
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SYNOPSIS

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

12       This  mkfs  frontend  is  deprecated  in  favour of filesystem specific
13       mkfs.<type> utils.
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15       mkfs is used to build a Linux filesystem on a device,  usually  a  hard
16       disk  partition.   The  device argument is either the device name (e.g.
17       /dev/hda1, /dev/sdb2),  or  a  regular  file  that  shall  contain  the
18       filesystem.   The  size argument is the number of blocks to be used for
19       the filesystem.
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21       The exit code returned by mkfs is 0 on success and 1 on failure.
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23       In actuality, mkfs is simply a front-end  for  the  various  filesystem
24       builders  (mkfs.fstype) available under Linux.  The filesystem-specific
25       builder is searched for via your PATH environment setting only.  Please
26       see the filesystem-specific builder manual pages for further details.
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OPTIONS

29       -t, --type type
30              Specify  the  type of filesystem to be built.  If not specified,
31              the default filesystem type (currently ext2) is used.
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33       fs-options
34              Filesystem-specific options to be passed to the real  filesystem
35              builder.
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37       -V, --verbose
38              Produce  verbose  output, including all filesystem-specific com‐
39              mands that are executed.  Specifying this option more than  once
40              inhibits execution of any filesystem-specific commands.  This is
41              really only useful for testing.
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43       -V, --version
44              Display version information and exit.  (Option -V  will  display
45              version  information  only when it is the only parameter, other‐
46              wise it will work as --verbose.)
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48       -h, --help
49              Display help text and exit.
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BUGS

52       All generic options must precede and not be combined  with  filesystem-
53       specific  options.   Some filesystem-specific programs do not automati‐
54       cally detect the device size and require the size parameter to be spec‐
55       ified.
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AUTHORS

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

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

70       The mkfs command is part of the util-linux  package  and  is  available
71       from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
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75util-linux                         June 2011                           MKFS(8)
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